2008 WSOP, Day 23: Sweat

Every day is well over 100 degrees. The wind is blowin’, but it’s a hot wind. Sort of like yr walking into a hair dryer.

Like most of us spending the summer in Vegas, I spend as little time as possible outside. When I first arrived I had considered forgoing renting a car. I’m staying reasonably close to the Rio -- not a long walk by any means. But I ditched that plan by the second day. Too hot, man. Too friggin’ hot.

Got this frankly silly-looking little silver Aveo. Looks like half a car from most angles. Had all kinds of trouble the first week or two finding the damned thing in the parking lot. Tim Peters, who’d worked the ’06 Series for CardPlayer, had actually warned me of this very phenomenon and had cautioned me to avoid it. I am referring to the where-the-hell-is-my-rental trek of shame.

There was one night around 3 a.m. that first week I actually ended up getting a ride from Security around the Rio parking lot just to locate the sucker. After a couple of loops I finally spotted the Aveo. “That’s one’s pretty car, ain’t it?” I quipped to the guard. He laughed. “Gets you from here to there -- that’s what matters,” he replied sagely. After that I began parking it in the same spot every day, somewhat distant from the Pavilion-side entrance but at least I always know where it is.

Got up today and made that very drive right about noon, even though it is my day off, ’cos I wanted to see if I could catch a glimpse of Karridy and SitNGo Steve playing in today’s Event No. 39, another one of those $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em events. Only takes about five minutes to walk from my self-assigned parking spot to the Rio entrance. Still enough to start perspiring, which always makes that initial step inside the air-conditioning faintly pleasurable.

I knew Steve’s table and seat assignment (he’d registered yesterday), and so after chatting with Dr. Pauly a bit found him and wished him well. Thought I might be able to spot Karridy on my own, but there ended up being 2,720 entered in this one, scattered all over the Rio in the Amazon, the Brasilia, the Tropical, and at those tables set up in front of Buzio’s. Hopeless.

So I went back out into the noonday sun and took a winding drive over to the Mirage to get tickets to the Cirque du Soleil show “Love” for next week. As I mentioned, Vera arrives tomorrow, and that’s the one thing we knew we wanted to try to do while she’s here. The tickets were pricey. (Turns out money can buy me Love.) But that didn’t matter too much to me.

Actually, waiting in line there at the box office, I found myself surrounded by couples and suddenly got blind-sided by a pretty hard, unexpected wave of Lonely. Damn, four weeks. Tomorrow is coming just in time, I think.

Got back to the home-away-from-home about one o’clock and immediately got a text message from the K-man telling me where he was seated. So I ran back over to the Rio, and snuck into the Tropical Room for a look-see. Twenty-three tables. Allen Kessler, Joe Awada, Mimi Tran, and two hundred other people I don’t recognize. Oh, and there’s Karridy.

I hung out for twenty minutes or so. They were nearing the first break. Looked over a couple times at Karridy’s table and not too much seemed to be happening.

Ah, but what’s this? A hand was developing. And boom, he was out.

Bit of an unsettling surprise, that. But then again, as I type this 2,200 of those 2,720 who entered have already hit the rail as well.

The K-man was bummed, as you might imagine. But things turned up soon afterwards. We chatted a bit with SNG Steve and their buddy Ryan (both still in then, out now), then were kind of aimlessly walking back through the Rio toward the casino when we heard a voice.

“Karridy! Shamus!”

Tom and Julie Schneider were lunching at the São Paulo Cafe, and we joined ’em for an hour or so. Tom’s a good friend and mentor for Karridy, and he and Julie both did a nice job reminding him he’s a good poker player and also giving him things to think about moving forward. Karridy had set up some sort of voice-messaging-update type deal to send updates to his many friends sweating him, and Tom made the call to report Karridy’s bustout, doing a hilarious bit about talking Karridy off a ledge as he did.

As I told Karridy afterwards, I ain’t playing in any events this summer, and it’s pretty up in the air whether I ever will. Might be fun to try one day, but I’ve a long way to go, I think, before I’d ever want to venture in myself. So I have a lot of respect for those who do take the plunge, and I have to say I’m getting a big kick out of experiencing this some vicariously through friends who are players.

We all parted. I’ll see Tom and Julie at tomorrow’s Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw Lowball event. And I might see Karridy again tonight before he takes off tomorrow.

It was about three o’clock when I stepped back out onto that hot plate of the Rio parking lot. Still seemed like noon, though, with that sun relentlessly enveloping everything around.

I wouldn’t be spending too much time in it, though. I knew where I was parked.

2008 WSOP, Day 22: Be the Ball

Last night’s final table of Event No. 34, the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha w/rebuys event, was pretty much a blur for me. When the night began Marc and I decided I’d do hands and he’d take care of chip counts and color.

Next I knew, eight hours had passed.

We didn’t have to do every hand. Not generally expected to do so in Omaha events, because of the extra cards to track. But I realized after the first orbit or so it was easier for me just to do each one rather than try and decide on the fly which ones were more significant. So I did, typing incessantly with only a couple of twenty-minute breaks which I usually spent speed-reading back through what I had written.

A weird mental test, that. Got into a kind of zone where it was just me, the announcer's voice, the soundless ESPN360 broadcast projected above, the tourney clock, and my laptop upon which my fingers were flying. Had one little spell about three-and-half hours in when I suddenly couldn’t remember how to spell “Makowsky” (the eventual runner-up’s name), but that passed within seconds. Felt pretty good about how it all turned out by night’s end.

Layne Flack won the thing -- his sixth bracelet -- and was very impressive (in my view) in the way he pressured his opponents pretty much from the start of the final table. He played lots of pots early on, and almost always entered hands by open raising the pot, especially later once he’d started accumulating chips. Every now and then he’d flat call others’ raises (in or out of position), but then usually would be the one taking charge of hands after the flop.

Wrapped up relatively early (I think it was just after 10 p.m. or so) and met up with Karridy, SitNGo Steve, Tom Schneider, and Tom’s wife Julie for some bowling over at the Gold Coast. A very fun crowd. Tom crushed us all in the first game, then everyone other than Tom improved vastly in the second (won by Steve).

For me it was just a matter of concentrating, though a couple of tips from Karridy and Tom definitely helped me keep the ball between the gutters. I was particularly pleased to have cracked triple digits in game two, making an even hundred on my very last ball of the night. Karridy had mentioned something early on about the overall loser having to moonwalk out of the alley, but somehow everyone forgot about that and yr humble gumshoe was able to walk out face first like all the other humans.

All four of them are playing in WSOP events this weekend. Karridy and Sit-n-Go Steve are playing in the “donkament” today, i.e., the $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em event (Event No. 39), and Tom and Julie will both be in the $2,500 Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw Lowball event (Event No. 40) tomorrow. I’m covering the latter one, and so asked Tom a bit about terminology for describing hands. I’ll be paired up with F-Train, who I imagine has some background with the game being the Razz fiend he is.

Day off today, though I’m gonna head over to the Rio anyway in just a bit to sweat the K-man (of whom I have a tiny piece) and SNG Steve. And tomorrow Vera arrives for a week-long visit. These last four weeks have flown by thanks to my having been kept so busy. But I’ve missed Vera a lot -- her not being here has been the only downside to this here entire adventure, really.

I have had some fun, to be sure, but I’ve been looking forward to June 22 for a month now. Can’t wait to see her.

Here’s to the Great Beyond

Alas. No more riding shotgun with my friends. One of yr funnier poker podcasts has decided to call it quits after nearly two solid years of providing us a big ol’ stack of grins & giggles. Yesterday the hosts of Beyond the Table -- Dan Michalski (Pokerati), Tom Schneider (Oops! I Won Too Much Money), and Karridy Askenasy -- posted what they’ve indicated will be their final episode.

I first started listening to BTT back in the fall of 2006. Had been snooping around on the Hold ’em Radio site looking through the different shows and happened to download one of theirs. Found myself cracking up at a story Schneider told about playing a high-stakes mixed game in which Jean-Robert Bellande was doing a bit of angle-shooting. Grabbed a few more episodes and quickly came to appreciate both Askenasy & Michalski’s quick wit as well. I also really liked hearing how the poker pro responded to various questions/concerns presented by the two amateurs -- a neat dynamic, really, that seemed to me like another way the show distinguished itself from others. Pretty soon BTT became one of the shows I’d listen to immediately whenever a new episode appeared.

After a few months of listening I wrote a post about one episode where they had an interesting discussion about poker blogs. (Yes, aside from the laughs, they had some genuinely thoughtful discussions on there about all sorts of poker-related topics from time to time as well.) The guys responded to my post, and we’ve been in contact ever since.

Around March of last year the group moved away from Hold ’em Radio and began producing the show independently, no longer recording episodes live. About a month later I ended up in Vegas right around the time of the big $25K buy-in WPT World Championship at the Bellagio, at which time I got to meet Schneider as he played a qualifer for the main event. (Here’s the post describing our meet-up.) The Donkeybomber did manage to win his seat into the ME there and ended up making a decent run before busting out shy of the cash.

Schneider clearly must’ve benefitted in some intangible way from our meeting and/or the good vibes that came from doing the show, as he would go on to win two bracelets in last summer’s WSOP on his way to being named WSOP Player of the Year. Got a huge kick out of seeing him do so well. I know his co-hosts did, too. I ended up writing a few items here about Schneider’s odyssey, including a description of his first bracelet victory in the $2,500 Omaha/8-Stud/8 event, “Oops, I Won a Bracelet.”

Somewhere along the way I also began writing up “summaries” (so to speak) of episodes that were posted over on the Beyond the Table website. My favorite one of those was for the episode titled “Live and Otherwise” in which the guys took on the challenge of trying to record a show sans edits. Here’s my synopsis:

Following a pattern established by arena faves Frampton, Kiss, and Cheap Trick, this episode of Beyond the Table captures the group in a rare live performance. With no edits, overdubs, or other studio gimmickry, “Live and Otherwise” finds BTT returning to its off-the-cuff, improvisational roots.

The set gets going with a raucous medley of blues-based numbers, including soon-to-be-classics “Queens Done Done Me In (Again)” -- featuring a solo from Little Tommy Schneider -- and the Askenasy-penned “I Think My Hair Has a Mind of Its Own.” The group then transitions into a surprisingly peppy version of “House Hoppin’ Blues” chronicling Dan’s recent move Vegas-ward.

From there the boys turn topical, with rockers “Flight of the Dragon” (noting David Pham’s having locked up Player of the Year), “Enjoying the Game” (an homage to Chip Reese), and “Guilt Trip” (regarding the Vaughn-Mizzi account-purchasing affair). As an encore, the group surprises the audience with a new title, “Fortune’s Steward,” a brief romp recognizing Falstaff, author of PokerStage and tireless organizer of the recent WPBT Winter Gathering.

(No one caught my Shakespearean allusion there at the end, as far as I know.)

Will definitely miss listening to new shows, but I appreciate how difficult it is to crank out these on a regular basis. Kind of amazing, really, to think how much free fun the BTT guys gave us over the last couple of years. Thanks for that, fellas. And for everything else, too.