Travel Report: 2012-13 WSOP-C Foxwoods Main Event, Day 2 -- Will Reason Win Out?

Another crazily long day of criss-crossing the tourney floor leaves your humble scribbler in a less than ideal state for chronicling his adventures this morning. We started at noon, didn’t leave until nearly 3 a.m. this morning, and after a few hours of winks I’m up again and eyeing one more day of poker at Foxwoods.

The day went well, all things considered, as the field whittled down from more than 200 to just 16. There were some good story lines emerging along the way, including the fact that among the final group there are two players who coincidentally share the distinction of having both finished 21st in the World Series of Poker Main Event.

Robert “Bobby” Corcione accomplished the feat last summer, the first time I got to know the player. And Paul Snead did so back in 2008. Corcione is a regular player these days, but I know Snead only plays occasionally since his deep ME run, and so it’s kind of intriguing to see both still battling as this tournament has reached the final two tables.

Those who remember Snead probably think first of that incident in which Tiffany Michelle called the clock on Snead in what turned out to be his final hand of the tournament (not against Michelle, but Scott Montgomery). Snead ended up making a great call after his session of contemplation was cut short by Michelle, but sadly suffered Montgomery hitting a three-outer to end his tourney run.

My blogging partner Chad Holloway has been industriously grabbing a few interviews with players here and there during the short 10-minute breaks to use in his future PokerNews pieces, with Snead being one of those with whom he’s spoken (probably for a “Where Are They Now?” column). Snead was very candid with Chad about that 2008 ME bustout and how it really kind of sent him away from poker, at least in a full-time sense. He’s a super amiable guy and a good player, too, one of several personalities left among the final group that help keep things interesting.

Looking at other sidebar stories, not a single woman made the money in this event (out of 63 cashing), the first time I think I have seen that happen in something other than a high buy-in, non-hold’em event at the WSOP. Meanwhile, Ylon Schwartz -- who also made a deep run in that 2008 WSOP ME with Snead, finishing fourth -- was knocked out late yesterday to finish 22nd.

Kevin “BeLOWaBOVe” Saul is probably the player left most likely to grab one’s attention as an observer. A good table talker and a great player, Saul might have been in first position to enter today’s final day if not for losing a big race with the excellently-named Ben Reason near night’s end to give the latter the chip lead. We’ve been somewhat restrained with the puns so far with Reason’s last name, although I couldn’t resist doing so above. I also had to break out a literary reference for my introductory post today.

Speaking of excellent names, one player who busted yesterday and with whom I chatted a little bit before his exit was named Z Stein, his legal name actually being just the letter Z. A nice guy who offered some encouraging comments about the reporting, Stein finished 26th.

Would obviously like to see a relatively shorter day play out today, perhaps giving us a chance to explore Foxwoods a bit more and maybe even play down in the very popular poker room where tons of tables are always going. But it’s likely we’ll go late again, thus diminishing the chance of our doing much of anything other than covering poker today.

Like I say, though, there are some characters and stories still in play. As you finish clicking around elsewhere to follow the WSOP Asia Pacific events -- where their day will be ending just as ours begins -- come follow along over at PokerNews to see how the remaining cast of characters play out today's last act in the WSOP-C Foxwoods Main Event.

(1900th post here, by the way. Damn lot of scribblin’!)

One (More) Time: Reliving My Last Day Reporting on the 2008 WSOP

Dialed up ESPN and took in most of last night’s coverage of the World Series of Poker Main Event. I’d missed the last week or two of broadcasts. Saw they’d reached Day 5 -- my last official day covering the WSOP for PokerNews.

As I watched ESPN move back and forth from the two feature tables to the outer tables, I vividly recalled the layout and where most of the players had been seated. I remembered standing next to the table with Dennis Phillips and Lisa Parsons, watching several hands at that table (and reporting on a couple). Also remembered Phil Hellmuth’s various antics at the outer table, having been stationed close enough to hear the “Honey, I’m all in!” call more than once.

I hadn’t reported on many of the hands they showed last night, though I did report that one between Hellmuth and Brandon Cantu that ended with him chirping something about “That’s why I throw it away, boys!” I was outside the arena that day, and so didn’t see the craziness at night’s end over at the feature table (some of which they showed last night). F-Train put in a couple of last reports that night about the blow-up and the one-orbit penalty Hellmuth had received for treating Cristian Dragomir so poorly, a penalty that was eventually (unfairly) rescinded the following day. (See F-Train’s discussion of all that applesauce on his blog today.)

In truth, after a blistering Day 4 -- one of the most manic days of reporting of the entire summer -- Day 5 had been relatively quiet for me. We had a couple more bloggers than we probably needed that day, and I remember not being terribly busy. The wildest hand I reported on on Day 5 was one in which Shawn Sheikhan had lost nearly his entire stack (like 1.5 million or so) with pocket jacks versus Jamal Kunbuz’ A-A -- a truly insane hand, I had thought. While I wasn’t being hyper-attentive with my viewing last night, I didn’t see any Sheikhan (who busted in 105th) anywhere.

In fact, I remembered most of the hands that were shown, either from having watched them or read my colleagues’ reports of them as they happened. I certainly remembered both of those crazy Tiffany Michelle hands. There was the one in which she had A-A and spiked an ace on the turn to survive against Alex Outhred’s flopped set of fives. Then the other in which she eliminated Marc Podell with versus his pocket tens. She flopped an ace, he turned a ten, then she hit a third diamond on the river.

A couple of other quick responses to last night’s show. For one, it’s hard not to be damned impressed with the dead-on reads of Alex Outhred and David Rheem, both of whom were shown precisely calling their opponents’ hands. Looks all the more impressive without the dozens of hands of context preceding those reads, but still pretty wild (and intimidating for us amateurs).

Also, I know we’re all tired of the “one time!” thing -- where a player’s whose tourney life is on the line (and is usually behind) calls out “one time!” in the hopes of seeing a needed card. How many times did we hear that last night? Three times? Four? I guess on one occasion -- the hand in which Mike Matusow survived with 10-5 -- it was uttered semi-facetiously. Dragomir (I believe) said something like “all you have to say is ‘one time’ and the pot is yours,” so Matusow obliged.

At the end of Day 5, they were down to 79 players. After my PokerNews work had concluded, I ended up sticking around the Rio to watch some of both Day 6 and 7 from the bleachers. Saw Hellmuth bust out on Day 6, then saw quite a bit of the feature table on Day 7 when they were down to 15 and fewer. Am curious, then, to see some of them hole cards, so I will surely tune for these last two weeks of coverage (four hours) of the Main Event.

Then on November 4 there will be a one-hour preview show, before the final table is repackaged and shown in a two-hour broadcast on November 11. Still think the whole delay wrecks the tourney, frankly. But I’ll be watching how it plays out, for sure.

On the Horizon: The Future of UltimateBet?

Catching up on the podcasts once again. Kind of fell behind over the summer, but am now back to listening regularly to all of those listed over on the right-hand column. And, by the way, new episodes of the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show will be coming before too long.

Yesterday I listened to Big Poker Sundays (7/20 episode) and the Two Plus Two Pokercast (7/21 episode), both of which spent time discussing the ongoing UltimateBet scandal, particularly focusing on the decisions made by individuals who have chosen to associate themselves with the site. A couple of points came up in those shows that I wanted to share and respond to here.

Phil “Completely Oblivious” Hellmuth

On the Two Plus Two show, hosts Mike Johnson and Adam Schwartz spent some time early on discussing the recent week of Poker After Dark. Rather than follow the usual sit-n-go format, last week PAD featured a cash game involving Mike Baxter, Allen Cunningham, Tom Dwan, Phil Hellmuth, Guy Laliberte, and David Peat. In their discussion of the show, Johnson and Schwartz particularly focused on Hellmuth’s poor performance and apparent lack of awareness of how others perceive him.

That got the pair onto other Hellmuthian absurdities, including his non-response to ongoing revelations of insider cheating having occurred at UltimateBet -- the site for which he is a paid representative.

Regarding the latter, Schwartz said that he has “talked to somebody who’s very close [to Hellmuth] and [whom] everybody... would know -- I don’t want to say [who it is].” According to Schwartz, this person has “talked to Hellmuth about [the scandal], and Hellmuth is completely oblivious. Like, he thinks that nobody really pays any attention to any of this stuff.... He absolutely doesn’t think this is going to anything bad for his reputation.”

Most listening to the podcast (or reading this blog) are probably not surprised to hear this about Hellmuth. We’ve grown accustomed to his aloof behavior. We’ve also rolled our eyes at the recent ads in CardPlayer attempting to recruit more members into the “UB Army” (from one of which the above picture of Hellmuth in faux-military garb comes). A recent one includes a memo from “UB High Army Command” from “Eleven Star General Phil Hellmuth Jr.” in which he invites the reader to join the UB Army “and gain exclusive access to our TOP SECRET MISSION.”

We roll our eyes, of course, because we know what happened at UltimateBet. It wasn’t exactly a “super-user”-type account being exploited such as we saw over at Absolute Poker, though functionally speaking it was the essentially the same problem -- namely, players who had access to opponents’ hole cards were playing on the site and exploiting the games. Indeed, the problem was more grave over at UltimateBet than at Absolute, insofar as it apparently involved an external program one ran alongside the UB software that enabled the user to see opponents’ hole cards (and not a special account).

What makes the scandal especially grievous is that the scam was perpetrated by insiders -- as UB itself admits in its statement of May 29, 2008, “the individuals responsible were found to have worked for the previous ownership of UltimateBet prior to the sale of the business to Tokwiro in October 2006.” Since that claim was made, further questions have arisen regarding the nature of UB’s ownership and whether the “sale of the business” really represented a complete break from those responsible for the cheating. UB’s failure to respond to these questions has only increased suspicions regarding the site, its owners, and its spokespersons.

All of which makes ad campaigns about some “TOP SECRET MISSION” seem particularly inappropriate -- or “oblivious” -- wouldn’t you say?

The Future of UltimateBet?

While news about Hellmuth’s lack of awareness about how he is perceived isn’t particularly surprising to most of us, there was one statement made over on the Big Poker Sundays show that I found especially curious. Unexpected, even.

There hosts Scott Huff and Haralabos Voulgaris spent the majority of the show discussing both Tiffany Michelle’s decision to don UB patches during the last three days of play at the WSOP Main Event and responding to some of Annie Duke’s statements in recent interviews about the cheating scandals.

Both Huff and Voulgaris express astonishment at Michelle’s decision to go with UB. For a thoughtful explanation of that decision and situation, go check out Change100’s analysis from late last week (if you haven’t already). A lot of us share the BPS hosts’ incredulity at Michelle’s decision, and Change100’s explanation of the significance of the player-agent relationship here does a lot to help those of us on the outside understand what might have happened.

In the midst of expressing his view of how short-sighted Michelle was in signing with UB, Voulgaris made a statement which I found a bit surprising. He pointed out how these sponsorship deals generally are set up so as to pay more the deeper one gets in the Main Event; thus, if Michelle had made the final table, she’d likely be looking to make considerably more than whatever she got for wearing the UB patches on Days 5, 6, and 7.

“This final table is going to play out in November,” Voulgaris continued. “There’s like a better than fifty percent chance that UltimateBet won’t even be around in November to pay her. So it’s like ‘okay, yeah, I’m gonna sign up with a company that may or may not be out of business by the time I’m due to collect my money.’ Which is kind of, I mean, may not be a smart thing to do. I don’t know, I mean if I’m going to [sign] an incentive-based contract, I want to at least make sure the people are going to be around to pay me.”

Can this possibly be true? Is there really a “fifty percent chance” UB will close up shop by November?

I mentioned last week that PokerNews no longer operates as a UB affiliate. (They no longer promote Absolute Poker, either.) Also on the “better late than never” front, the Poker Players Alliance yesterday issued its “Response to Online Poker Cheating Scandals,” in which the PPA urges both Absolute Poker and UltimateBet “and their regulating authority, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, to provide full and transparent accounting of these breaches of the public trust to help lift the black cloud that has been placed over the industry.”

Without such “full and transparent accounting” of what happened, will others turn their backs on Absolute Poker and UltimateBet as well? Will CardPlayer, ESPN, and others stop accepting advertising from the sullied sites? And, most importantly, will players stop playing on them?

I’m thinking we’re looking at considerably less than a fifty percent chance UB will no longer be around come November. Then again, who knows what exactly General Hellmuth sees approaching on the horizon?

On Patches and Pitch; or, the Disgrace That Is UltimateBet

I’m back, safe and sound. Still a bit weary (and, unsurprisingly, a bit under the weather at the moment). But very glad to be back.

Have started trying to catch up on the blogs and forums. My sense is most folks are describing that WSOP Main Event finale as a huge anticlimax. See both F-Train and Dr. Pauly for smart takes on the whole “out with a whimper” feel to the event. Mean Gene’s WSOP coda neatly captures the idea, as well.

Can’t help but notice when assessing “the rumble” how a lot more energy is being directed at the moment toward the UltimateBet scandal and associated stories than toward the WSOP. Which perhaps says something about the relative importance of both to the so-called “poker community.”

When we had that freeroll tourney early last week for PokerNews peoples, one of our field reporters, Tim, showed up with a hilarious white long-sleeved shirt on which were sewn about twenty patches of various online poker sites and other pokery stuff. A number of these guys have worked previous tourneys together, and so some perhaps had seen Tim’s shirt before. But I hadn’t, and so got a good belly laugh out of it.

The shirt was funny for a couple of reasons. For one, although we had dealers and played the freeroll as if it were a regular WSOP event, it was essentially an informal, friendly affair in which the idea of “sponsorships” was amusingly incongruous. Also, I got the sense that Tim’s shirt was part of a tongue-in-cheek effort to intimidate opponents, the kind of thing that perhaps works for real in other contexts, such as on the ESPN feature table during a WSOP event.

The fact is, while these patches most certainly have a tangible value for the players, they carry significant symbolic weight as well. And sometimes the figurative meaning can overwhelm whatever literal significance the patch might have.

I just got the chance this morning to read PokerNews’ statement about Tiffany Michelle’s decision to don UltimateBet patches during the last stages of her amazing Main Event run. In the statement, PokerNews expresses disappointment in the sponsorship deal, suggesting how it in fact conflicted with PokerNews’ own association with Michelle as she was both an employee of PN and a sponsored player.

The upshot? PokerNews says it has been “sabotaged by Tiffany, her agent and UltimateBet,” and as a result appears to be severing its ties both with Tiffany and with UltimateBet.

Can’t really comment on the former, as I have no real insight into the nature of Tiffany’s sponsorship deal with PN. Goes without saying that I personally wasn’t too thrilled when I saw her show up on Day 5 (my last day of live blogging) marked as the latest recruit of the UB “army.” But, whatever -- not my business.

But I am associated with PokerNews, and thus am most certainly pleased about the latter development in which the site for which I write will no longer have UltimateBet among its roster of sponsors.

Have been trying this morning to catch up on all the latest rumblings related to the sordid UB saga -- e.g., these revelations that cheating occurred on UB as early as January 2005, that numerous large scale money transfers were routinely permitted to occur between alleged “super-user”-type accounts, and that UB owner and 1994 WSOP Main Event champ Russ Hamilton along with several co-conspirators have been implicated.

UltimateBet is a disgraceful mess of an online poker site, dragging the reputation of online poker deeper and deeper into its unsavory muck with each passing week. The standing of other UB-paid entities such as Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth has clearly been negatively affected this summer, and the longer anyone persists with their association with UltimateBet, the worse it will be for him or her.

In the first part of Henry IV there is a scene in which Falstaff, play-acting as the king (Henry’s father), ironically warns the young prince about hanging out too much with people like himself. “There is a thing, Harry,” says Falstaff (as the king), “which thou hast often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch. This pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile; so doth the company thou keepest.”

Falstaff is joking around, but Harry knows exactly what he’s talking about. Indeed, eventually Harry will cut the fun-loving drunkard Falstaff loose as someone he can’t politically afford to be associated with once he takes the throne.

UltimateBet has now become a similar sort of “pitch” -- a thick, black, tar-like substance the more one rubs the worse it stains. Eric “Rizen” Lynch and PokerNews have realized this, and thus gotten away. I have, too, in a sense. You might notice a couple of my advertisers (under “Shamus Plugs”) have UB included among their collection of links. One has already agreed to remove the UB link. The other is up for renewal in a couple of months; I’ll see then if they’ll remove the UB link (if not, we’ll no longer be running the ad).

It’ll take a while, I think, but we’ll get the UB stain out eventually.

2008 WSOP, Day 45: From the Bleachers

A friend of mine, James, is visiting Vegas for a few days, and a primary reason for his visit was to check out the World Series of Poker. He’s relatively new to poker, having seen it on television the last few years and heard me talking about it now and then. When he learned of my coming out this summer, he decided to take a trip of his own. The timing of his visit was particularly good, as he arrived just as I was putting in my final shift with PokerNews.

Yesterday James and I went over to the Thomas & Mack Center during the afternoon to watch some of that NBA Summer League that’s happening over there this week. We saw one game between the Charlotte Bobcats and New Orleans Hornets. Not too thrilling, as none of the regular rosters of either squad showed up. Nor did the head coaches, so we didn’t see Larry Brown, the Bobcats’ new leader. Was still fun to watch some hoops.

Afterwards, I found myself once again heading back to the Rio, accompanying my friend to watch some WSOP. I had my credentials with me, but kept them in my pocket most of the time.

We started out taking a spot up in the Milwaukee’s Best Light No Limit Lounge, and indeed we were drinking cans of the Beast with Phil Hellmuth’s picture on the side as we watched the Poker Brat get knocked out of the Main Event in 45th. My main feeling at watching his demise was ambivalence, with perhaps a dash of pleasure as I anticipated some seats opening up below (they did).

I was surprised to have learned about the decision to overturn Hellmuth’s penalty at the beginning of play yesterday. Talk about applesauce. I hadn’t witnessed the tirade that got him the penalty at the end of play on Saturday, so I can’t say one way or the other whether he deserved it. But you can’t just take it back like that. We would witness another player, Joe Bishop, receive a one-orbit penalty yesterday over at the ESPN feature table, although I am not certain what he did to earn it. Whatever it was, he surely didn’t have the opportunity to appeal his case the way Hellmuth had.

After the first break they swapped Tiffany Michelle’s table over to the main stage, and we eventually would watch a couple of levels’ worth of her table in action. This was a period during which Michelle built her stack from approximately four million up to the nine-plus million she has to start play today. She played well, I thought, being aggressive but not recklessly so, and doing a terrific job accumulating the chips when she did hit hands. Had one hand in particular in which she flopped a set of treys and got the absolute maximum out of Cristian Dragomir (sitting to her right).

As a PokerNews colleague, I have met Tiffany and chatted with her a few times, and though I can’t claim really to know her much beyond that, my impression is she’s a friendly, witty person and certainly not hard to root for here coming down the stretch. She’s done the video interviews for PokerNews the last couple of years, and if you’ve seen those you know she does quite well in front of the camera. A lot has already been made of her being the last woman still playing, and, of course, she’ll be a superstar should she make it through today and to the “November Nine.”

Tiffany’s an interesting case, really. This is her first ever Main Event, but she has a lot of tourney experience. And as an interviewer and actress, she’s much more comfortable in the spotlight (I’d think) than most -- or, perhaps, all -- of the other 26 players still vying for the bracelet. So while on the one hand it seems utterly remarkable for her still to be playing here on Day 7, on the other hand it shouldn’t be all that surprising to see her handling herself well here during these final stages of play. (She begins today in 3rd place.)

During one of the breaks last night I separated momentarily from James to go talk to Tim Lavalli, the Poker Shrink, who along with Amy Calistri is putting the final touches on a book about Mike Matusow. (Matusow went out on a tough hand in 30th last night.) Was glad to meet Tim in person, and I definitely look forward to the book. When I reunited with James, he was all grins as he showed me a picture of himself with Tiffany. Apparently he’d caught her coming out and she had taken the time to pose for pictures with a few folks, and he’d jumped in line and got his own pic.

Remains to be seen whether James got himself photographed with one of the November Nine or not. A lot can happen today, of course. Play gets underway in just a few minutes. Of the remaining players, the ones I was most impressed with along the way were Craig Marquis (currently in 2nd place), David Rheem (6th), Brandon Cantu (14th), and Albert Kim (18th).

James is in town until tomorrow, and I know he wants to go back today to watch some more. I’ll probably head over at some point, too. Dunno when, but I think I probably would like to be there for the very end. Will let you know tomorrow what I saw.

Meanwhile, you can follow along from afar over there at PokerNews.