2013 WSOP: Day 24: Year of the Player of the Year

Was a late one on Friday as I was on Day 3 of Event No. 35, the $3,000 pot-limit Omaha event here at the World Series of Poker where Jeff Madsen led pretty much the entire last day as they played down from 19. Madsen won his third WSOP bracelet and first since winning two in one week as a 21-year-old back in 2006.

Afterwards my blogging partner Rich and I marveled a little at how many of the WSOP Player of the Year winners seem to be thriving in 2013. In fact, four of them have won bracelets, counting 2004 WSOP POY winner Daniel Negreanu’s Main Event win at WSOP Asia Pacific. Madsen won the WSOP POY in 2006, Tom Schneider (who has won two bracelets this year) won it in 2007, and Erick Lindgren (who won a bracelet this week) won WSOP POY in 2008. Additionally, after the event completed last night, Jess Welman tweeted that seven of the nine WSOP POY winners have made final tables this year.

I liked Rich’s way of describing the trend. “Year of the Player of the Year,” he said. That pic above, by the way, is from the start of the 2008 WSOP (via Pokerati) and shows Madsen’s WSOP POY banner on the right and Schneider standing in the spot where his poster eventually would be hung that year.

I’ve been on two events thus far since I’ve arrived, won by Lindgren and Madsen. Good players repeatedly performing well in poker tournaments always inspires lots of talk about the game’s skill component, with results such as the ones we’ve seen at the WSOP this summer often becoming cited examples in a long running argument that the rewards in poker ultimately correspond to players’ relative decision-making abilities -- i.e., that poker is, indeed, “a skill game.”

Such results do not, however, work as evidence to support arguments minimizing luck’s role in the game. As dominating as Madsen was yesterday, there was a hand in which he was not involved that saw a short-stacked Scott Clements fail to earn a double-up after getting his last chips in on the turn with a 90% chance of winning only to bust in fifth.

For a good while before that hand, it appeared somewhat likely that Clements -- who like Madsen had won two bracelets prior to this event, both in Omaha games in fact -- would be the one eventually to meet Madsen heads up. Besides being the most accomplished players remaining, they appeared the strongest, too, and so it was hard not to anticipate such a conclusion.

But Madsen wouldn’t have to worry about Clements from four-handed on down, and after losing his lead momentarily just as heads-up play began with Douglas Corning, Madsen retook the advantage and more or less rolled to the win. That is him on the left from last night, still exhibiting that same characteristic pending-action pose with his left hand on his opposite shoulder as was captured in that banner photo from seven years before.

Such is often the case, that even in tourneys where a winner’s skill appears to have been unequivocally demonstrated, one still can’t deny the chance element in poker, especially short term. Sure poker “aintluck” entirely (as the poker news site says). But it ain’t all skill, either.

By the way, that Phil Hellmuth blow-up I alluded to in yesterday’s post was in fact directed toward Madsen shortly after the latter had eliminated him.

Amid Hellmuth’s petulance -- which included him calling Madsen the “worst f***ing player ever” -- Hellmuth asked a question of the tourney’s eventual winner.

“How do you even have all those chips?”

Madsen didn’t reply, but the actual answer to such a question is always complicated, no matter how good the player with the chips is.

I’m back on another PLO event today, picking up Day 1 of the $5K PLO 6-max. (Event No. 41) on which I’ll be reporting from start to finish, an event that no doubt will have Madsen and Clements in the field. The higher buy-in will ensure a number of other strong players will be there as well when play begins later this afternoon. Click on over if you get the chance.

2013 WSOP, Day 23: Divided Attention

Worked Day 2 of Event No. 35, the $3,000 pot-limit Omaha tournament that started with 640 runners, saw 137 come back yesterday, and would eventually play down to 19 before play was halted a little before 3 a.m.

Was kind of an interesting scene just as the tourney reached the money bubble with 55 players remaining. Hand-for-hand play had commenced, and as it turned out it would take probably 20 hands or so for another bust to occur. PLO is definitely an action game, but without antes the short stacks can endure folding hands between the blinds for a lot longer, especially when the game is nine-handed.

About halfway through that sequence came the tipoff of Game 7 of the NBA Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat. Nearly all 55 of the remaining players and pretty much every one of the reporters and staff as well were interested seeing how the game would play out, and so many were as much attuned to the large screen televisions on either side of the tourney as to the hands being played on the bubble.

During the break many of us assembled in front of one of the TVs, and I took a few pictures, including experimenting a little with the “panorama” setting on the iPhone:

That’s Mike Sexton in the middle with the red jacket. I asked him if he’d bet the game, knowing the answer would yes, and he told me he had a bet on the Spurs to win the series but had put something on Miami for this final game.

I believe the bubble finally burst around halftime, then the game concluded just before the dinner break arrived, meaning players, staff, and reporters all continued to be distracted by the thrilling conclusion that saw Miami prevail.

I was pulling for the Spurs, and in fact threw a twenty on the money line just for kicks as a San Antonio win would give me more than three times my money back. My blogging partner Rich, meanwhile, took the less risky path of betting Miami and giving the points, and he ended up earning a small profit.

It was actually kind of a fun way to experience Game 7. Not as absorbing as watching without working, but still entertaining to be around lots of others whose attentions were divided like mine.

As mentioned, they’d ultimately play down to 19, with Jeff Madsen taking a big lead to carry into today’s final day of play. Among those cashing yesterday was Tom Schneider, his seventh cash already this summer (and we’re just now crossing the halfway mark).

Schneider went out in 60th, but his name was coming up amid table talk much later on as both Will Failla and Sexton sung his praises. The subject of the WSOP Player of the Year race came up again, too, with both of them agreeing they’d prefer the non-Vegas WSOPs not count (and thus Schneider’s stellar summer make him the current leader rather than WSOP APAC winner Daniel Negreanu).

Another player who was being talked about after his exit last night was Phil Hellmuth who finished 26th. That’s because as usual Hellmuth made his customary show of petulance following his bustout, which Rich ended up including in the report of his last hand.

I was working on another post at the time and couldn’t be too bothered to pay much attention to Hellmuth’s antics. I won’t deny that they can be entertaining, even after witnessing them dozens of times before. But these days I find myself thinking more and more how poor they reflect on the all-time leading WSOP bracelet winner.

I’ve mentioned before here on the blog that rumor that has floated around off and on over the last few years regarding Hellmuth perhaps becoming some sort of spokesperson or representative of the WSOP once its online site goes live for real money. I have no idea whether that talk has any basis in reality or not, but I can say I’d be plenty disappointed if such ever were to come to pass.

Never mind Hellmuth’s self-serving, community-destroying, decade-long endorsement of the most thoroughly corrupt online poker site ever, I can think of hundreds of others I’d rather choose to introduce new players to the game.

When the night finally ended, Sexton came around to give me and Rich a “good work today” and wish us good night. I found myself thinking again about Hellmuth and his departure.

Sexton is of course known as the “ambassador of poker,” and the contrast between the two of them couldn’t be greater, in my opinion, as stark as the cheery red of Sexton’s jacket yesterday and the gloomy black of Hellmuth’s. To give my post title another meaning, when it comes to these two players, the attention of one seems always to be on others, while the other’s attention is always on himself alone.

Back at it today, where Rich and I will be seeing this sucker through and report on Day 3 of Event No. 35. Besides Madsen, Scott Clements, Ashton Griffin, Jarred Solomon, Christian Harder, and Sexton are perhaps the best known players remaining, although there are a number of other players of note still in the field including some other former bracelet winners.

Click on by and check it out, if you like, now that there’s no more basketball to distract you.

Tom Makes It Three

Was up late last night following various poker-related happenings, including that Event No. 15, the $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. event in which my friend Tom Schneider, a.k.a. the “Donkey Bomber,” was leading as the final table played out.

From a starting field of 862, they’d gotten all of the way down to three-handed with Schneider ahead of Owais Ahmed and Viatcheslav Ortynskiy when I finally hit the hay. Got up to discover Schneider had won, and thus began the day with a grin much like was the case about a week-and-a-half ago when I woke to see Chad Holloway had managed to outlast the final few players to take down that Casino Employees Event No. 1.

Schneider joins Mike Matusow atop the weekend headlines from the WSOP, as “The Mouth” also managed to claim another bracelet -- his fourth -- after winning Event No. 13, the $5,000 Stud Hi/Lo. Meanwhile the Canadians keep grabbing gold, with Mark Radoja picking up a fifth bracelet for Canada in Event No. 16, the $10,000 NLHE Heads-Up event. (The U.S. has won the other 11 bracelets thus far.)

Schneider has been cashing at the WSOP for quite some time, his first in-the-money finishes coming in 2002 and including a 36th-place in that year’s Main Event. He became better known in the poker world in 2006 after a third-place finish in the televised WPT World Poker Challenge (during which Mike Sexton first dubbed him the “Donkey Bomber”).

Anyone who missed that show finally got to know Tom the following summer when he won his first two bracelets at the 2007 WSOP on his way to winning that year’s WSOP Player of the Year. He’s continued to post frequent cashes and deep runs both at the WSOP and elsewhere during the years since, including a 52nd-place finish in the 2009 Main Event.

Long time readers of this blog might remember I first met Tom way back in 2007, just a few months prior to his breakthrough at the WSOP that summer. I’d become a fan of the podcast he, Karridy Askenasy, and Dan Michalski (of Pokerati) were doing at the time, called Beyond the Table. After having interacted with those guys several times previously online, I happened to be in LV on a trip that spring at a time when Schneider was there, and so we had a chance to meet up in person. I wrote about that meeting here in a post titled “Shamus, Get Your Ass in Here!”

Kind of interesting to look back at that post, actually, written before I’d gotten involved in tourney reporting myself or really writing about poker anywhere except here at HBP. Later on I was thrilled to see Tom soon winning bracelets, then once I started in 2008 going out to the WSOP every summer, he and I would generally get together at least once each summer to catch up.

I have continued to report on those later meetings with Tom from time to time here. This morning I’m remembering in particular one post from 2010 titled “On the Schneid” in which I shared some of Tom’s comments to me over dinner regarding the emotionally-challenging grind the WSOP can be. I’m also recalling that deep run Tom made in the 2009 Main Event, as well as an unintentionally funny text message I sent to him then which I revealed here later that summer.

You can click above to read the whole story, but I’ll sum it up quickly here to say I’d accidentally sent Tom a memorable text message that I thought I was sending to Vera. It was a message in which I had referred to the recipient as “mama” and ended with “xxx.”

Waking up this morning to see Tom had claimed his third WSOP bracelet -- just a week after his wife, Julie, made her second career WSOP final table in Event No. 5, the $2,500 Omaha/Stud Hi/Lo event -- I couldn’t resist sending him a text in acknowledgement:

“Congratulations, mama!”

Murder in the Cards on CSI

For a while I’ve been planning to create a special “Poker and Pop Culture” page here on Hard-Boiled Poker that will link to the various columns I’ve written under that heading both here and elsewhere, getting them all in one place for easy access.

As I start to get that page together I now have a new entry to include, a write-up of last week’s poker-themed episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation that appeared on CBS. I wrote about the show for my “Pop Poker” column on PokerListings, and the article appeared yesterday as “CSI Features Poker Serial Killer (and Tom Schneider).”

I’d known that CSI had an episode involving poker coming up for a few weeks now, having spotted a couple of reports highlighting David Cassidy’s upcoming guest spot on the show as an aging poker champ. As it turned out, Cassidy’s turn was mighty brief as his character gets offed in somewhat gruesome fashion even before the opening credits roll.

I had no idea my buddy (and 2007 WSOP Player of the Year) Tom Schneider was to appear on the episode as well until just a couple of days before it aired. Schneider happened to know the show’s producer who called him up a couple of months back asking about getting a consultant to help them with poker-related details. One thing led to another, and Tom ended up getting recruited to play a poker dealer -- a non-speaking role, but his character in fact is significantly involved in the episode’s twisted plot.

Read the article to learn more about how Schneider got involved in the show and a little more about the premise and story. I purposely avoided getting too detailed with explaining the episode’s plot or revealing any spoilers, since I know folks reading the article might not have seen it and might be curious to do so. I didn’t even get into talking about the two hands of poker that get highlighted in the episode, including the one from the final table of the 1997 Palermo Poker Classic (meant to resemble the WSOP Main Event) that ultimately sets what turns out to be a long-delayed revenge plot into motion.

In that hand a player flops a set of aces, then Cassidy’s character makes runner-runner quads with his pocket kings to win the hand. Here and elsewhere, the script writer, Gavin Harris, throws in a few details that poker players might find distracting as either improbable or not really accurate as far as an individual hand or the playing of a tournament goes. But he does ultimately figure out a whacked-out way to build a whole serial-killer plot out of the playing of a single hand of hold’em, with individual cards providing inspiration for various murderous methods (and in one case, the weapon itself!).

Reading around today, I am seeing how a tennis-themed episode from January featured a tennis racket as a weapon, with Chris Evert, Lindsay Davenport, and Justin Gimelstob among that show’s guest stars. Looks like that show also features some knowing references to the world of professional tennis, not unlike some of what happens with regard to poker and the WSOP in this latest episode, the title of which in fact comes straight from tournament poker, “Last Woman Standing.”

At the end of the PokerListings piece I make a couple of disclaimers about the episode, one of which is to acknowledge that you’ll need to be able to suspend your disbelief a bit to enjoy it. The other is to warn the squeamish about the gore, which frankly amazed me. (I’m thinking of one scene in particular -- anyone who sees the show will know which one.)

I hadn’t really watched CSI much since it first began airing over a decade ago. So while I was aware of general complaints about the show (and prime time graphic violence, broadly speaking) I had no idea how far the standard had moved for what is allowed these days over network teevee.

Some of my academic writing has been about film, including a new article in the latest issue of Paracinema which I mentioned here back in January. Some time ago I found myself focusing on horror films for a while and among the pieces I published were a couple about Halloween III and The Stepfather -- two ’80s horror entries that get grouped with other “slashers” of the day. (If you’re curious about those old articles of mine, click the film titles to read posts over on FilmChaw where I talk a little more about each.) But even with that background, I was still surprised a little by last week’s CSI.

Anyhow, with those warnings having been made, I’ll echo what I say at the end of the PL piece and say that poker players might well find the episode interesting -- and perhaps somewhat different from the usual ways poker tends to pop up in mainstream popular culture.

2012 WSOP, Day 29: Adults Playing Games

“Pretty good deal, if you think about it,” I said to Jessica Welman late yesterday afternoon. “Adults playing games.”

Jessica, who this year has moved into a position as Managing Editor of WSOP.com, had stopped by the event I was helping cover, Event No. 42, the $2,500 Omaha/Seven-Card Stud Hi-Low Split-8 or Better event that had reached its final day. Was one of those scenes worth stopping for.

No, Jessica and I weren’t watching poker being played. It was another mulit-player game, Achtung, for the iPad.

They’d reached the first 20-minute break of the day, with 15 of the 22 players who’d started the day still with chips. I spent the first half of the break chatting and catching up with my friend Tom Schneider, one of the 15.

That’s when Bryan Devonshire, sporting a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, strolled over with his iPad. “C’mon,” he said to Schneider. “Yeah, yeah... I’m in,” said Schneider.

Soon Schneider and a couple of other players still alive in the tourney, Perry Friedman and Mike Krescanko, were huddled around the iPad with Devonshire, all playing Achtung, a game in which each directs a glowing line around the screen with arrows in the corner, trying to cut each other off to be the last one standing. Not unlike the goal of the tourney itself, although the reward for winning was a little different.

Eventually others jumped in to take turns, including my blogging partner Rich, and I stepped back to snap a pic. Finally the break ended, and the other game -- the one with cards and chips -- resumed.

It was the kind of day that reminded one how despite all the drama and seriousness that necessarily will accompany any contest in which participants’ money is put at risk, we are, essentially, watching adults playing games.

Seemed like most of the players who’d made it to those last two tables in Event No. 42 were having a good time. Helped that a number of them are witty, personable guys, too, such as Devonshire, Schneider, and Friedman. Lots of fun table talk punctuated the play throughout the day and evening, with those guys involved a lot of the time.

At one point Devonshire strolled over to Schneider’s table between hands to ask him how things were going. “Want to go fishing?” he added, and Schneider laughed. “I’m kinda bored.”

Meanwhile Friedman had ’em chuckling back at Devo’s table with his self-deprecating (and tongue-in-cheek) analysis of his own play. After winning an Omaha/8 hand in which he’d defended his big blind with a subpar starter, then stubbornly called down to eek out half the pot with a weak high hand, he half-jokingly explained how it had been his experience as a Full Tilt Poker red pro that made him such a calling station.

“Players always tried to bluff me, so I got used to calling a lot,” explained Friedman, wearing a green t-shirt with “NO SOUP FOR YOU” in big white block letters on the front. “I should’ve gotten over that after more than a year, though,” he grinned.

None of those guys would make it to the final table, going out successively in 13th (Schneider), 12th (Friedman), and 11th (Devonshire). But another who also brought the funny did make it that far, long time poker commentator Norman Chad.

Chad actually began the final eight-handed table with a second-place stack, though ultimately saw his run end in sixth place (out of 393 entrants).

Chad wasn’t always cracking wise during play, and in fact was mostly quite serious. But once he got short stacked with six players left, the fun really began.

First came a Stud/8 hand in which a player completed, another called, and the action was on Chad. As he considered what to do, he fished out a fortune cookie, opened it, and began to eat as he read.

“Within the week you will receive an unexpected gift,” he said, sharing what the slip of paper said. “That’s kind of vague,” he decided, and then folded.

It was the Omaha/8 round when Chad finally decided to commit his last chips. I’d noticed a hand or two before Chad had his wallet out underneath the table, and so had a feeling he was planning something else mischievous.

Sure enough, when betting in his last chips, Chad additionally produced a VISA card as well as his AAA card and pushed them forward. “This one has a $50,000 limit,” he deadpanned, pointing to the VISA and suggesting he’d like to use some credit to increase his bet. (Those pictures above of Chad playing his last hand was snapped by always-on-the-spot Joe Giron for PokerNews.)

Fun stuff. And a final table, too. Gotta give the man some credit (rim shot).

After Chad’s elimination things did grow relatively more serious until the young Ukrainian Oleksii Kovalchuk finally took the last of George Danzer’s chips to give the 22-year-old his second WSOP bracelet in two years.

There were probably 30 or so people there cheering Kovalchuk on, and when the final Omaha/8 card fell on the river, they came up to the table and surrounded him, all hugging and cheering.

Soon they were actually lifting him up and throwing him aloft -- no shinola -- something I don’t think I’ve ever seen happen at a tourney before. They weren’t too agile about it, actually dropping him on the floor which led to more laughter. But he was back on his feet in an instant to receive more hugs and congratulations.

It was a suitable conclusion to a day filled with grins from beginning to end. With reminders, too, that at the heart of it, we’re mostly a bunch of adults playing games here. And that really is a pretty good deal.

2011 WSOP, Day 38: Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall

The 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event kicked off yesterday with a modest-sized field of 897 turning out for Day 1a, the first of four consecutive Day Ones. Day 1a usually attracts the fewest entrants of the four, although yesterday’s total was down fairly significantly (about 20%) from last year’s Day 1a total (1,125).

The low turnout meant the entire Day 1a field could be seated inside the Amazon Room with a lot of tables to spare. With the big, bright “mothership” sitting there in the middle of the room taking up a lot of space, there are fewer tables in the Amazon this year than in years past. They did use the feature table there, but most of the time there were only two or three dozen spectators in the stands watching it. All of which made the vibe seem somewhat desolate yesterday, with lots of empty seats and tables surrounding the players, dealers, staff, and those of us covering what was going on.

Nor was there much fanfare, either, as far as the preliminaries went -- e.g., no UNLV marching band like in 2008 or anything close. Just a somewhat tired-seeming Doyle Brunson quickly delivering the “shuffle up and deal” instruction before shuffling himself over to the feature table where he lasted just a few hours more before being eliminated.

Nor was there much in the way of Main Event goofiness on the fashion side of things. Just a couple of crazy hats and one dude in a red velvet robe. It was almost refreshing to see one player, Richard Wyrick, surprisingly return from the dinner break dressed as Snow White, complete with outfit, makeup, and black wig. Had kind of a Divine-like thing going there, really, as he sat there behind his dwindling stack of chips.

Wyrick finished 27th in the WSOP ME in 2006, actually. Apparently he felt like things weren’t going too well during the first three levels, so he dressed up for the post-dinner poker in order to try to change his luck. He made it through the day, but will return to a super short stack on Monday (Day 2a). And perhaps in a different costume.

But that was really it as far as novelties went. Otherwise it was a lot of baseball caps, hoodies, sunglasses, and a few cowboy hats. Just a lot of dudes (and a few women here and there) playing cards. Was almost wishing I’d see the seven dwarfs arrive at some point to cheer on Wyrick, but Dopey, Bashful, Sneezy, and the rest were nowhere to be found.

Grumpy was there, though.

Many readers of this blog no doubt are familiar with the blog kept by Bob Woolley, a.k.a. “Poker Grump,” and thus probably know about how he managed to score a seat in the Main Event this year via that raffle conducted by Daniel “jungleman12” Cates. (See here for details.) As it happened, Bob was seated in my section yesterday and so I had the chance to follow his progress off-and-on during the day.

Of course, I would’ve been visiting Bob’s table frequently anyway, since he ended up drawing one of the more stacked tables in the room, one including Olivier Busquet, David “the Maven” Chicotsky, Tom Schneider, and Greg Raymer. No shinola! That photo of Bob, by the way, is courtesy of Ben over at Wasted Aces Poker. Check out his post from yesterday for some more shots from Bob’s table.

Bob managed to survive to the dinner break with roughly the starting stack, then lost some afterwards to finish the day on the short side. (Here’s Bob briefly describing his day; stay tuned to his blog as I’m sure he’ll be reporting further on it all.) In fact, Bob outlasted Chicotsky, Schneider, and Raymer -- all of whom busted yesterday -- to be one of the 560 who made it through to Day 2. (Busquet eventually was moved to another table.)

Bob actually knocked out Schneider, and I happened to be there to report on the hand. Pocket aces for Bob and pocket kings for a short-stacked Tom. Kind of poignant for me to write that one up, given that I’ve been friends with both guys for several years.

Long-time readers of the blog know how I met Tom way back in the spring of 2007, before his great run at that summer’s WSOP when he won two bracelets and WSOP Player of the Year. I had spoken with Schneider just before play started yesterday -- in fact, I’d gone over to the table, talked to him, and didn’t even notice Bob sitting a couple of seats away -- and he related to me how it had been a somewhat tough Series for him and he’d hoped the ME would turn things around.

I was over there later on to see him make an amazing fold versus Raymer, laying down a middle set of tens on the turn versus Raymer’s top set of queens. He was obviously playing well, but the cards just wouldn’t cooperate. (See this short piece by Otis on the PokerStars blog reflecting in part on Tom’s plight.)

Wasn’t the most thrilling day of poker I’ve covered, but certainly a memorable one. I’m currently fighting a touch of the “blogger flu” I think, and by night’s end my sinuses were on fire, my eyes bloodshot and moist, my head heavy. I took a look around at those remaining and found myself kind of weirdly identifying with everyone in the room, all of these hopefuls, just wanting to get through to the end with chips, to keep it going.

Bob’s playing yesterday might’ve had something to do with my being possessed by such feelings. Although he’s certainly a more experienced and accomplished player than I am, I still kind of think of him as a peer of sorts and thus his playing makes the idea of me taking a Main Event seat seem less fantastic. Thus (perhaps) I was thinking more specifically about the players’ perspective yesterday than I would have otherwise. Tom’s hard luck day might’ve also affected me in a similar way. Such a good guy, and terrific player. But the cards don’t care about how good anyone is -- as people or as players.

Or maybe it was Snow White sitting over there that made everyone seem just a tad more vulnerable. Who knows?

It’s an odd thing, the WSOP Main Event. I suppose it’s like the Queen’s magic mirror. The poker world looks into it year after year, asking for some sort of validation or truth or something of use in its ongoing quest for self-definition.

Still a couple more weeks for us to look and see. And ask.

Five Years

On April 28, 2006, I published my first post on Hard-Boiled Poker, titled “What’s the Rumpus?” The idea to start a blog had come perhaps a week or two before. Not quite spur-of-the-moment, but close.

There was no “five-year plan,” I can assure you. There wasn’t even a second-post plan, to be honest.

I had brooded a while over what to call the sucker, and somewhere along the way thought up the Shamus character behind whom I’d sort-of-hide for the first part of the blog’s history.

I’ve written before here about how I’d begun with an idea to write about poker -- primarily my own low-limit misadventures -- while employing the “hard-boiled” style of the detective novels I loved (and eventually tried to follow in my own novel). It only took a few weeks to discover I couldn’t keep firing out posts about gathering scratch and setting up patsies and running grifts while keeping a straight face. So, much as players eventually find the style that suits them best, I soon settled into a more reasonable “voice” with which to continue.

The passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 in October also affected the direction of the blog. I’d scribbled some about the WSOP that summer and other items in the poker “world” not having to do with my own circumscribed experiences. But now there was lots else for a blogger identifying himself as an “online poker player” to consider.

On April 28, 2007, I was in the midst of publishing a series of posts about a trip to Vegas with Vera Valmore. Posts from that trip described (in absurdly comprehensive detail) some low limit sessions, meeting cool cats like Paul Seldon (one of the very first readers of HBP), Tom Schneider (who’d go on to become the WSOP POY that summer), Wade Andrews (of Hold’em Radio), and Howard Schwartz (proprietor of the Gamblers Book Shop), and an especially entertaining ride on the Deuce titled “What Happens In Vegas Gets Spread All Over the Internet.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d been to Vegas, but it was still a place full of new experiences for me. Had no idea at the time that before long I would be spending entire summers there.

Wasn’t long after those Vegas trip posts I got recruited by John Caldwell and Haley Hintze (then) of PokerNews to help out with some articles over there that summer while the first-string scribes were away to cover the WSOP. That association continued afterwards, and eventually led to my joining the team of bloggers at the WSOP the following year.

On April 28, 2008, I wrote a post titled “Celebrating Seconds” in which I commemorated the blog’s second anniversary with an account of a runner-up finish in a “Saturdays With Pauly” PLO tournament.

Looking back at that post causes me to think that it came at a time when I was probably enjoying playing poker more than I ever had before or perhaps even since. I was also enjoying writing about poker, and excited about the opportunities I getting to write more.

On April 28, 2009, the blog’s anniversary came and went without my even noticing. My post that day was titled “Time Is Money; or, the Return of the Waiting Game.” (Maybe I was in a hurry and hadn’t the time for sitting around celebrating birthdays.) The post followed up an earlier, much-viewed one sharing a story from that year’s SCOOP involving Daniel Negreanu complaining about opponents stalling as the cash bubble neared.

On April 28, 2010, I was just about to leave my full-time job to focus entirely on freelance writing. I’d made the decision many months before, but it would be a couple of days later (on May 1) that the move would become official.

Not too surprising to see I was in an especially self-reflective mood on that day, as evidenced by the post “Detour: Four Years of Hard-Boiled Poker.” That one tells the story of the blog fairly well, if you’re at all curious about that.

Speaking of telling my story, earlier this week I had the chance to do so in an interview with Mike Owens over on CheckRaze. And tonight I happen to be appearing as a guest on “Keep Flopping Aces,” the podcast hosted by Lou Krieger and Shari Geller. (The timing there is coincidental -- it was “Black Friday” and all that has happened since that I’ve been invited to discuss on KFA, not this here blog.)

If you’re interested in hearing the show, it starts at 9 p.m. Eastern time tonight (Thursday, 4/28) over at Rounder’s Radio. You can listen live, and later the show will be archived.

Events of the last couple of weeks had caused me to think about this fifth anniversary of the blog a little differently. I’ll admit I even had a moment -- a couple of days after “Black Friday” -- where I thought maybe this would be a fitting place to write a final post and move on to devote more time and energy to other, non-poker writing. Or perhaps to announce my intention to scale back and post less regularly. After all, I have posted every weekday here since January 1, 2008 (and on some weekends, too).

But it seems after five years of this there’s more to write about than ever before. Even if, as an American with no money in accounts that haven’t been shut down by the feds, that “an online poker player” descriptor is currently inaccurate.

So the scribbling will continue.

Can’t begin to say how appreciative I am of everyone -- all of the way back to my buddy Paul who came on here back in June 2006 to say “Nice blog shamus. Keep up the good work!!!” -- who has spent time reading and responding to all these many “musings” over the past five years.

As I was writing about earlier this week, the blog has led to a lot of interesting, exciting opportunities for me over the years. But most importantly it has been the means by which I’ve gotten to know countless people -- including many amazing, creative, funny, smart people I today unhesitatingly list among my closest friends.

Thanks again, everybody. I’m so grateful this here blog enabled us to get together.

2010 WSOP, Day 36: On the Schneid

“People are playing for their lives.”

Poker pro Tom Schneider said this to me over Sports Deli burgers at the Rio a couple of nights back. I first met Tom three years ago, just before he went on to win two WSOP bracelets and earn the WSOP Player of the Year title in 2007. He’s one of a growing number of players whom I’ve gotten to know over the last few years. Tom’s a funny, thoughtful guy whose book Oops! I Won Too Much Money is a good introduction both to his sense of humor and his insight.

Most would say Schneider has had a successful WSOP in 2010, having cashed four times in preliminary events. But Schneider knows that hasn’t been enough. For most pros like him who play lots of events, it really takes more than just earning a few relatively small cashes to offset buy-ins and expenses. “Have a bad WSOP and you really have a bad year,” he explained to me, highlighting the importance of these many tournaments piled on top of one another over the last five weeks.

Schneider could be forgiven for having been a little down about poker during our dinner. Just a couple of hours before, he’d been eliminated from the event I was covering, the last of the $1,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em tourneys (Event No. 54). I’d actually had just happened to see his bustout hand from beginning to end, and had thus been able to report it over at PokerNews.

They had reached Level 5, the last level before the antes kick in, and Schneider was sitting on a little less than the starting stack. He had opened with a raise from middle position, and the player on the button reraised. I stood off to the side -- in fact Tom told me he didn’t even realize I’d been there -- and watched as it folded back to him. He paused a beat and said he was all in, exhaling the announcement in a way that made it seem like he wasn’t too happy to be getting his chips in here, but that he didn’t see he had any alternative available to him.

His opponent snap-called, and Schneider flipped over two black aces, getting a small reaction from the rest of the table. His opponent had two red jacks. But then the dealer delivered four hearts among the community cards, giving Schneider’s opponent a flush and sending him out of the event.

“That’s kind of how the whole Series has been for me,” said Schneider of the hand afterwards. He has a favorite saying he sometimes uses which seemed to apply here quite readily: “No good deed goes unpunished.”

Poker is hard enough, but the chance element further challenges those who play the game well yet find themselves not being rewarded for doing so. Which happens. A lot. And in fact, there are more and more players playing well these days, much more than even just three years ago when Schneider won his bracelets and the WSOP POY.

But that general increase in the number of skilled players isn’t what Schneider was referring to when he said players were “playing for their lives.” He was referring to the poorer economy and the fact that many players are essentially now playing with their “case money” with no margin for error. Gone (for the most part) are the rich whales playing for fun and without much care about losing their buy-ins. The relative “stakes” are higher for everyone, it seems, whether the buy-in is $1,000 or $10,000.

I was back on Event No. 54 last night for Day 1b where I had an interesting interaction with one of the players which kind of reminded me of what Tom had said. We were getting close to the end of play, and he wanted to know both where he stood chip-wise versus the field as well as what the payouts were.

I showed him what those making the final table stood to make (from $570,960 for first down to $45,286 for ninth). Then I showed him what the minimum cash was ($1,868). Then he wanted to me to scroll back up to the range where he said he “needed” to finish. We got back up to the top 54 and that was where he said he had to get.

I looked at him and he confessed why it was he needed to come away from this $1,000 buy-in event with at least a $9,000 score. “I have to offset what I lost at craps,” he said with a mischievous grin.

Schneider doesn’t have that craps problem to add stress to his efforts at the WSOP. But he is struggling to break even here, as are so many other players. Indeed, for many the idea of breaking even has long been essentially abandoned, with only a deep Main Event run making that even possible.

Schneider did just that last summer, finishing 52nd in the ME and thereby making up for an otherwise not-so-hot WSOP (he’d just one small cash prior to the Main Event last year). I’ll be pulling for him and a lot of other folks next week when The Big One finally gets underway. Though I know it’ll be tough for all, given that everyone is fighting so hard. And the way good deeds (or plays) tend to get punished now and then.

Meanwhile, I’ll be back on Day 2 of Event No. 54 today, when the cash bubble will burst and the fight for bigger rewards will continue. Follow that one as well as the other final preliminary bracelet events (plus the Ante Up for Africa charity tourney) over at PokerNews’ live reporting.

2010 WSOP, Day 35: In Person

Yesterday I helped cover Day 1a of the last of the $1,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em events (Event No. 54), an event I’ll be sticking with all of the way through the final table. Was kind of a fun day for me. As has happened with the other $1K buy-in events, I ended up having a lot of interactions with players -- more so than occurs with other events -- including meeting some new ones and also getting to meet a few folks whom I’d known previously but had never met in person.

A total of 2,340 registered to play in the event yesterday, and 331 were left when play was suspended halfway through Level 9. They do that now, after learning their lesson with the first of these “Grand Games” back in late May.

I had helped cover the first $1,000 NLHE event (Event No. 3) and so had been there at the end of Day 1b when that potential crisis arose (mentioned briefly here). In that one they had played 10 full levels on Day 1a, with 276 players surviving. They then began Day 1b, and after registration closed the payouts were determined and the top 441 players would cash.

They were moving into Level 10 on Day 1b of Event No. 3 when it started to look like enough players might be eliminated that they could possibly reach the money bubble before the end of Day 1b, which obviously wouldn’t be fair to those who played Day 1a. Fortunately that didn’t happen, but they set up a plan then to stop play short on Day 1a of these events if the field shrunk to a certain percentage. Which is why we had a shorter day yesterday, and will again today, since they’ll again stop things at the same point in Level 9 for the Day 1b group.

Anyhow, like I say I got a chance to meet a few players during the day. Some of my friends played in the event, including Marc Convey and Tim “Timtern” Fiorvanti, and it was fun seeing them at the tables.

I also met some new folks, too, including one player named Joe Singer who was involved in a weird hand in which a mistake caused him to get all of his chips in with against two other players. Luckily for him, it worked out and he survived.

In the hand, Singer had failed to hear a player announce an all in before him and he had called thinking he was only calling a prior (smaller) raise when in fact he was committing nearly his entire stack. Then another player behind him shoved over the top and he was forced to put the rest in, too. But he very fortunately ended up making a straight and instead of getting knocked out essentially tripled up. He was a good sport about the whole thing, and glad to have the story of the hand included in the blog.

I was able to meet the player Jena Delk yesterday, someone with whom I have a lot of mutual friends. She arrived at the start of the day with boxes of donuts for AlCantHang, and was asking me where he was and what he looked like. I didn’t realize it was Jena until after, and so when I tweeted about her coming by I got a lot of responses clueing me in. I was glad to see her make it through Day 2.

I finally met Kara Scott in person yesterday as well, as she, too, played the event (and also made it through to Day 2). I interviewed Kara a couple of months ago for Betfair (via phone). Ended up reporting on one somewhat intriguing hand of hers during the day.

At night’s end Lynn Gilmartin of PokerNews came around to interview Kara. Lynn asked me if she’d been involved in anything interesting during the day, and I told her about the hand, which Lynn said she’d then ask Kara about. Am intrigued to know what Scott might have had on the hand (she won it without showing), and so am keeping an eye out for that video on PokerNews to see if Kara told Lynn what she had.

At the very end of the night I also got to say hello to Mike Johnson, co-host of the Two Plus Two PokerCast, and tell him how much I’ve enjoyed both that show and the old Rounders show that preceded it. Mike also played the event and survived to Day 2, and when play ended he was running over to the $1,500 Limit Hold’em Shootout (Event No. 53) to sweat both Dan Idema -- his co-host Adam Schwartz’s brother who has made two WSOP final tables this summer -- and Terrence Chan. Of those two, Chan did make it to today’s Event No. 53 final table.

Yesterday was also highlighted by an enjoyable dinner with Tom Schneider over at the Sports Deli. Tom busted from the event late in the afternoon, getting his aces cracked by pocket jacks in a hand I happened to see (and report on). Tom and I discussed a wide range of poker-related topics, including the current state of the “poker economy,” various personalities and characters in poker, what the future holds for poker in general and the WSOP in particular, and more.

I might share a bit of what Tom and I talked about in tomorrow’s post. Meanwhile, I’ll be curious to see who comes out today for Day 1b. If yr curious, too, check out the live reporting on PokerNews today and see what’s happening.

Canceling Out the Noise

Got an especially nice gift the other day from Vera, her mom, and my mom. My birthday comes up in mid-June, when I’ll be away in Las Vegas helping cover the WSOP. Anticipating that trip out -- plus another excursion down to Lima, Peru the first week of June for an LAPT event -- the ladies in my life together conspired to get me an especially useful gift: a groovy set of Bose noise-canceling headphones.

If you’ve ever tried ’em, you know how well they work. Slip ’em on, and they comfortably cover yr ears and already muffle outside ambient noise to some extent. Then flip the switch. I’m sitting here right now next to my desktop computer, the hard disk of which is churning away. This I hear quite plainly even with the headphones on, but once I’ve flipped the switch -- nothing. Dead silence. I can barely hear my fingers tapping the keyboard.

Think I’ll dial up some Fela Kuti for the rest of this here post. Anyone comes knocking at my door for the next little while, they ain’t gettin’ an answer.

I was curious to find out how the headphones work, and so over the weekend looked around some online. Vera says this is especially geeky of me. Not denying that.

I read about how essentially any pair of headphones feature passive noise-reduction -- that is, simply by covering yr ears and blocking sound waves from getting in there. That’s what I experience when putting on these without flipping the switch. Then, after I turn ’em on, I enjoy active noise-reduction, too.

This further reduction of noise is accomplished by the headphones actually creating sound waves themselves. These sound waves apparently imitate the ambient noise except for the fact that they are 180 degrees out of phase with the unwanted sound waves. That is, they have the same amplitude and frequency as those incoming waves, except the crests are where the troughs are and vice-versa.

The result is a canceling out -- “destructive interference” -- which I experience as blissful silence. And in which I can now enjoy the funky lines and rhythms of Kuti and the Africa 70. Perhaps the funk will cancel out the geek here.

(You can read a full explanation over on the “How Stuff Works” site, from which comes that graphic above.)

I also played a little over the weekend, squeezing in a couple of short sessions amid other business, including preparing for my trip to LV. Can’t say I played particularly well, although I did have other things on my mind.

I leave tomorrow, and so am trying to settle various items before I go. It has been a very busy few months -- and, I suppose, a bit stressful, given my recent decision to leave a full-time position I occupied for many years. In other words, there’s been a lot of “noise,” you might say, to interfere with my poker playing, as well as other endeavors (including writing) to which I’d like to be able to devote my concentration.

Anyone who plays poker at all seriously is well aware of the importance of canceling out the “noise” when playing. I am reminded of Tom Schneider’s 2006 book, Oops! I Won Too Much Money, in which he delivers that lesson more than once.

In one chapter he talks about being in the “spin cycle” where a series of misfortunes at the tables seem to get compounded by difficulties elsewhere, too. Which makes it harder to play well, because “it’s not easy to play poker when you’ve got problems.” In another he talks about going through a divorce and how that’s not such a good time to play, either. In a third -- “Is Everything OK?” -- he discusses other kinds of “noise” that can interfere with your concentration, thus making you less likely to be successful at the tables.

Schneider additionally offers some ideas for dealing with this noise -- what might be called some “active” noise-reduction techniques. Get out of the “spin cycle” by mixing things up or altering your routines. Or at least be aware you’re in the “spin cycle” and avoid making big decisions while stuck there. Make a checklist to help ensure other, personal matters are settled before sitting down at the table, then “play in peace.” As Schneider suggests, “make sure you have the important things in life done first before you try to make money in any endeavor, because winning is more important than playing. If you continue to win you can continue to play.”

Makes sense not to be solely “passive” about knocking out the noise, but to try to take “active” steps to find out what is disturbing your thinking and cancel out that unwanted clamor with some directed, “destructive interference.” Important for success at poker, obviously, but also for any other enterprise -- like writing -- that requires concentration and focus.

Gonna think on all this some more while I pack. Gotta find ways to oppose the noise. To be opposite...

Them go show-ee-o, them go show
Them go show themselves clear clear
Them go show-ee-o
Them go show-ee-o, them go show
Opposite people
Them go show themselves clear, clear
Them go show...

Groundhog Day & Other Rituals

Today is Groundhog Day, that day when folks gather in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to watch a groundhog emerge from its burrow to deliver a weather prediction for the next six weeks. Actually it looks like such gatherings are occurring in dozens of cities this morning, as apparently “Punxsutawney Phil” is no longer the sole authority when it comes to rodent meteorologists these days.

If the groundhog does not see his shadow, he’ll scurry on out of the burrow, an action that is taken to signify that winter will be ending soon. If he does see his shadow, he’ll turn tail and run back down the hole, meaning we are to expect six more weeks of winter (as the calendar had already indicated).

I always thought that seemed a little counterintuitive, in that seeing a shadow would mean the sun is out, which would perhaps suggest in a more direct way that winter weather might be giving way to spring. Then again, we’re getting our weather forecasts from an animal that allegedly gets frightened at the sight of his own shadow, so perhaps it is best not to be so fussy about such things.

The real value of such rituals lies elsewhere, I suppose. Groundhog Day has origins that date back well into the 19th century, but it doesn’t appear that anyone ever really planned his or her life according to the prediction. Rather, the event is an occasion for an annual social gathering, perhaps some PR for the hosting city (which explains why other places than Punxsutawney are getting into the act), and other more tangible benefits than can possibly be derived from the capricious behavior of what is essentially a big squirrel.

It is fun sometimes to agree -- or pretend to agree -- with others that something that is not verifiably true somehow is. Such is the value of fictions, those made up stories the pleasure of which comes from our willingness not to insist on factual truth. And even if fictions dispense with facts, they can reveal deeper “truths” sometimes -- that is, ideas about our lives’ significance that also give us pleasure, or perhaps edify us in other ways, too.

Poker involves many rituals. Many are connected to the rules of play, almost all of which have been introduced with good reason. Tapping the felt before dealing the community cards signals to players that betting has concluded. Burning cards reduces the likelihood of dodgy dealing. Capping one’s cards with a protector prevents them from being mistakenly dragged into the muck. And so forth.

But many other rituals are superfluous, introduced into the game by players for reasons that aren’t necessarily logical. Rubbing one’s cards on the felt before looking at them. Stacking chips in a particular way. Standing up when all in. These actions have no particular, concrete significance, really, other than perhaps contributing to the player’s comfort level. Yet players perform them. Again and again.

Then there is that card protector. Needful, yes. But often loaded with extra, illogically-assigned meaning, too.

Noticed a tweet about card protectors yesterday from “DonkeyBomber,” a.k.a. Tom Schneider, the two-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner who finished 52nd in last summer’s Main Event. (If you enjoy funny, poker-related tweets, check him out.) Speculates Schneider, “What if the only thing keeping a person from winning the main event is that he was using the wrong lucky card protector for the last 20 yrs.[?]”

Like most of Schneider’s tweets, he’s kidding us. The question nevertheless made me think of an old friend from school, a huge basketball fan with whom I’d sometimes watch games on TV. When his favorite team played, he insisted on a number of rituals, including assigning particular seats to his guests, turning certain lamps on or off, and forbidding the utterance of certain words and phrases at certain times (e.g., never say “miss” when the opposing team shoots a free throw).

Occasionally some new person -- already suspect because his or her very presence introduced a new element into the game-watching -- would challenge the need, say, to refrain from laying one’s jacket over a particular armrest. To which my friend always had a ready response: “You can’t prove it doesn’t have an effect.”

Good enough. Same goes for Punxsutawney Phil, I guess. Or Queen Charlotte. Or Buckeye Chuck. Or General Beauregard Lee. I guess in terms of causality we’re talking about something slightly different here, but there remains the difficulty of trying to prove the lack of a connection between two events.

Groundhog Day does help prove one thing, though. Humans can be cute, silly creatures sometimes.

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!”

Make a Point to Double-Check, Double-Check to Make a Point

This summer at the WSOP I finally got around to learning how to play Chinese Poker. A few of us on a break dealt out some hands and I received a quick tutorial. Didn’t take long to see why the game can be so addictive. One of the field reporters had the Chinese Poker application on his iPhone, too, which I thought about adding to mine. But since it wasn’t a free app -- and because I’m cheap -- I passed.

There’s now a free version of the app, which I grabbed before my recent trip to Kyiv, Ukraine and enjoyed playing during random moments along the way. Took me about a hundred hands to realize I wasn’t playing very smartly, and so started looking further into strategy.

Tom Schneider made a couple of Card Player videos a while back in which he talks about Chinese Poker. The first covers basics, like how to deal and some of the default strategies for building hands and avoiding getting scooped. That first one also talks about scoring and points work, which is simple but not obvious to a newcomer:

In the second video, Tom gets into explaining royalties and how they might affect one’s strategy. He also talks about some of the variations like deuce-to-seven in the middle.

These vids were recorded right near the end of the WSOP Main Event. You might recall that Schneider made it all of the way to Day 7, ultimately busting in 52nd place. In fact, I’m remembering that after he busted I ran over during the dinner break and joined Tom and crew while they ate dinner, and sure enough Chinese Poker was being played at the table.

This is also making me recall a very funny story involving Tom from right there at the end of the WSOP that I don’t think I shared here. Story also has to do with my iPhone, as it happens, which I had only just picked up in May right before going out to Vegas.

Long time readers of the blog know about how I met Tom a couple years ago (via his old podcast, Beyond the Table). He and I have been in contact ever since, and this summer had talked a few times and exchanged text messages now and then. So when he was making his deep run in the ME, it wasn't unusual for me to send him a text message wishing him well. Sent during the morning before Day 7, actually.

We got to the first break that day and as I often did took a moment during the break to fire off a text to Vera Valmore: “hey mama... first break about to end... day goin’ well xxx.”

That is to say, I thought I’d sent a message to Vera. It was later that afternoon Tom finally busted, then sometime after that he sent what I assume was a text to all of his contacts passing along the news that he was out.

That’s when I realized -- my earlier message... I’d sent it to Tom, not Vera! I had a feeling as soon as I started texting with the iPhone that at some point I would probably make that mistake. The message app opens to the last person you texted, so if yr not paying attention, it isn’t that hard to send a message to the wrong person. Finally I had done it.

Sent Tom another text, explaining the mix-up. “Disregard the ‘mama’ and ‘xxx’ and replace with ‘dude’ and a high-five” I said.

Funny stuff. Tom got a big laugh out of it, and referred to me as “mama” from that point forward. That was the night I met ’em all for dinner, and then later in the evening had the chance to play for an hour or so with Tom, Julie, and others in the Rio poker room. Got to play both Badugi and deuce-to-seven triple draw for the first time ever live. A highlight of the summer, for sure.

So the moral of the story here is always double-check, whether when setting your hand in Chinese or sending a text to your buddy. In the former case, you might accidentally kiss yr money goodbye. In the latter, you might accidentally kiss yr buddy.

2009 WSOP, Day 48: The 64 Player Question

Another highly interesting day at the Rio yesterday. It was Day 6 of the 2009 World Series of Poker Main Event, when 185 players took five two-hour levels to play down to 64.

Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, J.C. Tran, Joe Hachem, David Benyamine, Kenny Tran, and Peter Eastgate were all were eliminated. But at the end of the day several big names remained with chips, including Prahlad Friedman (60th), Joe Sebok (56th), Blair Rodman (44th), Dennis Phillips (43rd), Tom Schneider (34th), Eugene Katchalov (24th), Jeff Shulman (12th), Antonio Esfandiari (6th), and Phil Ivey (3rd).

Darvin Moon is the chip leader with 9.745 million, but really anybody with at least a couple of million is still firmly in the hunt. Even a guy like Friedman, who begins the day with 860,000, is still (theoretically) going to be able to see plenty of hands before pushing the issue, as the blinds start at 25,000/50,000 today, with a 5,000 ante (Level 26).

In other words, this sucker is still just about anybody’s game.

The plan today will be to play down to 27 players, meaning 37 eliminations will need to occur before they call it quits. We lost 20 players during the penultimate two-hour level last night, then 17 more during the final two-hour level, so this morning I find myself trying to gauge just how long it will take to get to 27.

Average stacks right now are just over 3 million -- that’ll be 60 big blinds when we begin. When we started the previous level (with 81 players left), the average stack was 2.4 million -- also right at 60 big blinds at Level 25. That would suggest we’d lose around 17 again the first level of play today. That would leave us with 47 players to begin Level 27, at which point there’d be an average stack of nearly 70 big blinds. Let’s say we then lose a dozen players in Level 27 -- that would leave 35 to start Level 28 (40,000/80,000/10,000), again making the average stack about 70 big blinds.

To try to predict, then, I’m going to guess we get to 27 players by the end of three levels today -- although the truth is play could slow down much more dramatically and thus stretch out the day. Also, as we know, tourney officials have demonstrated a willingness all week to change the schedule on the fly. (Truth be told, no one really knew until we began the last level last night what exactly the plan was yesterday.) So once again, we’ll all be ready for anything.

From the reporting side of things, the day was both especially fun and satisfying, and incredibly frustrating. Most who read this blog probably checked in on our coverage on PokerNews at some point yesterday, and if you did you might have called up the site during that hour-and-a-half late afternoon that the site had gone down. Too many visitors, apparently, which one would think could’ve been anticipated somehow. In any event, the site just couldn’t handle the overload, and down we went.

We reporters continued to write posts all through that period, then when the site finally came back up we published ’em all as quickly as we could with the appropriate timestamps, all the while still writing up more items. As was the case a couple of days before when we experienced a similar outage (for about 45 minutes, I think it was), everyone remained cool and calm -- nothing we could do, really, and so we just kept on scribblin’.

Certain stories are starting to become especially compelling at this point. Having Phil Ivey way up there with chips, as well as Antonio Esfandiari, is pretty damned intriguing in and of itself. Ivey making the November Nine would be incredibly beneficial to many, many folks in the poker industry, and Esfandiari making it would also be a coup (besides turning him into a top tier poker star). Dennis Phillips’ presence at this late juncture is also starting to emerge as another impressive story. There’s one woman left -- Leo Margets -- and she has a lot of chips at this point with 3.65 million. And there are certain players like Ludovic Lacay and Antoine Saout who are mixing it up a lot and thus adding some intrigue by helping ensure big chip movements.

Many of the poker media and others are pulling especially for Tom Schneider, who has an average stack right now of just below 3 million, and Joe Sebok, who has exactly one million to start today. Schneider started well yesterday, then got moved to a table where the wild and aggressive Lacay was on his left. Schneider lost some chips there, but got ’em back at his next table after a big A-K versus A-Q double up. Sebok, meanwhile, did a fantastic job nursing his very short stack yesterday -- really he’s been doing that for three days of play now -- and will have 20 big blinds with which to work when we begin at noon today.

There are a few reasons why many are pulling for Schneider and Sebok. Not only are both especially friendly toward the media, but they have both been part of poker media, too, over the last few years -- Sebok most especially as the driving force behind Poker Road, but Schneider, too, via his involvement at Pokerati, his participation in the old (and terrific) Beyond the Table podcast, his book (Oops! I Won Too Much Money), and in other ways. Both are well liked by many fellow players, too, and along with many others left among the 64 are pretty obviously among the group of “good guys” most everyone wants to see succeed.

So lots of reasons to be interested in what happens today. Hopefully the server issues or whatever they were that affected the PokerNews site yesterday have been resolved and thus the site will be working well enough today, so head on over to the live reporting page and check it out.

2009 WSOP, Day 35: Being There

Day 35. Five weeks. Amazing how quickly they’ve seemed to pass. Two more to go.

Event No. 56, the $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Handed event, drew 928 runners. That was a decent bump up from last year’s total in this same event (805). Was also more than the 865 listed in that WSOP Staff Resource Guide as a projected total for Event No. 56.

Was talking a few days ago about how the previous event I covered, the Limit Hold’em Shootout (Event No. 50), had a smaller-than-anticipated field, but resisted using that event or the $50K H.O.R.S.E. (the number of entrants for which was also down significantly) as an indicator of what might happen with regard to the size of the field for the Main Event. The fact that Event No. 56 drew a large field is probably a good sign, I’d think, that no-limit hold’em in particular is still going strong. And that maybe, just maybe, the Main Event will attract 7,000 players after all.

The day went fairly well from the reporting side of things. Had some truly interesting hands come up. Dario Minieri busted on a kind of crazy hand in which he open-raised from the button, got reraised Roy Matthews in the blinds, Minieri four-bet, his opponent five-bet, then Minieri shoved with just enough chips to perhaps make a player not holding pocket kings or pocket aces fold. But Matthews had K-K and called, and Minieri was forced to show his 8-3.

There was also Daniel Negreanu’s crazy cameo in this event. He was busy playing Day 2 of another event, where he’d built a stack, and so wasn’t too interested (or able) to devote much time to Event No. 56. So he’d rush over, take his seat, and ship it hand after hand. I wrote one very long post titled “Diary of a Madman” describing a manic, up-and-down sequence of a half-dozen hands or so that Kid Poker played. He’d eventually bust, having once again gone all in after flopping a thin draw, but not getting there.

There was also a curious hand that came up involving Scotty Nguyen. Nguyen had open-raised from the cutoff, got reraised by the button, and it folded back to Nguyen who called. Then, before the flop was dealt, the button asked the dealer to deal him his second card -- he’d only gotten one. And he’d had the cojones to reraise Nguyen anyway. The dealer ended up delivering the second card, and the hand proceeded, with Nguyen betting the flop and his opponent folding. Weird stuff.

As anyone who has followed the coverage closely this year has noticed, PokerNews made a couple of changes with regard to how Day 1 gets reported. We’re not trying to do the impossible and track chip counts for even a small percentage of the field as we did last year. Even with just a couple of hundred players, it really isn’t feasible -- nor even that meaningful, when it comes down to it -- to try and give ongoing counts for even a significant percentage of the players. Never mind how doing that sort of accounting work often takes away from the time and energy available to write posts.

So we pick up the counts on Day 2, and really it isn’t until the end of that second day when we get to the money and the top 50 or so players do we try to provide that comprehensive view of everyone’s stacks and how they’re changing. As my tone probably indicates, I like this change and think it makes sense both on a practical level and in terms of what makes for the best coverage.

Another change this year is a consequence of the relatively smaller cast of characters we have working this time around, which has meant for many events we only have a single blogger working the first and second days, and even sometimes the last day, too. Last year I don’t believe I ever worked without a blogging partner, while this year I’d say two-thirds of my days have been me working solo with a field reporter or two.

I suppose I’m mostly ambivalent about this change. I don’t think it has affected the coverage that greatly, although obviously with two bloggers there’s going to be more quantity and a greater variety in a single live blog of an event than otherwise.

It has affected the experience of covering events somewhat, though. As I wrote about frequently last summer (and a little bit this summer), a lot of what made things fun and gratifying last year was getting to work closely with a number of smart, funny, interesting people who were all genuinely focused on helping each other in the pursuit of a commonly understood goal. That’s also been true this summer, it’s just we’ve had these long stretches of working separately, then getting back together only briefly, say, at a final table.

The big reunion happens Friday, though, as we’ll all be working together to cover the Main Event. Looking forward to it, to be sure.

Speaking of getting together with friends, when the night was over I ignored the $50K H.O.R.S.E. entirely -- where David Bach finally took it down at about ten o'clock this morning (sheesh!) -- and instead headed over to the Miranda Room where they were playing out the next-to-last day of Event No. 55, the $2,500 2-7 Limit Triple Draw event.

Why did I go over there? Because Julie Schneider, wife of 2007 WSOP Player of the Year and two-time bracelet winner Tom, is still in the hunt! I hung out with Tom, Karridy, and Pokerati Dan to watch the last levels of play, leaving just before they wrapped it up for the night. Julie is currently one of nine players left, sitting right in the middle of the pack (5th place) in a group that includes John Juanda, Blair Rodman, Nam Le, and some other formidable 2-7 players.

As you might imagine, Tom was as happy as could be. And I was happy for him and Julie both. Was a neat way to punctuate the day, hanging out with some buds, watching someone I know making good in one of these suckers. Just slowing down a bit and enjoying being there, in the company of others, taking it all in.

Vera left yesterday, and so the likelihood had been high that I might’ve hand one of those lonely-seeming-why-am-I-still-here kind of days. But that didn’t turn out to be the case. Indeed, as I left the Rio I had a big ol’ dumb grin on my face, thinking about Julie’s success and the sheer joy it was bringing others. And how cool it was to be there, at the World Series of Poker.

It had been a good day.