Hard-Boiled Poker 2013 Year in Review (Top 50 Most Viewed Posts)

Was writing yesterday about moving and the way it kind of forces a person to undergo a kind of involuntary self-assessment shaped by one’s material possessions.

Look at all of these things you have. What do these things say about the kind of person you are? How do they reveal your personality and character? Your likes and dislikes? Your thousands of idiosyncrasies, some shared with others, some entirely unique? Even the way you pack, unpack, and subsequently arrange (or rearrange) your stuff reveals what is important to you and what is not.

I mentioned also yesterday how the year coming to a close perhaps intensified some of the usual ideas and emotions moving inspires. In other words, as I spend this morning continuing to reorganize everything on this last day of 2013, I’m consumed by thoughts of how I’ve spent the last 12 months (and beyond), what modest successes I’ve managed to achieve, and the many other goals that remain unrealized.

I’ve concluded the last several years with a few posts presented under the heading of “Year in Review” in which I’ve gone through the blog month-by-month and linked back to posts as a kind of “best of” compilation. The task of pulling together those posts has always begun with me initially fighting through a thick fog of self-loathing, battling through the mechanical work of cutting-and-pasting links and writing up summaries, then feeling a temporary moment of satisfaction at having given myself a job and completed it.

I began Hard-Boiled Poker in April 2006, and starting in 2008 I imposed upon myself a schedule to post every weekday, something I’ve managed to continue for six full years now. I also have routinely done daily “travel report” posts whenever taking a tourney trip, which means I’ve been posting on the weekends occasionally, too. Once again, then, there’s a lot of friggin’ posts to get through when it comes to this business of reviewing it all. For the year I’ve written 284 posts total, including this one.

I’ve decided this year to test a different method for the “Year in Review.” Instead of spreading the summaries over several posts, I’m just going to go with this single end-of-year entry so as to get the old out of the way and start the new year with the new. I also thought it might be more interesting this time to look into which of those 280-plus posts in 2013 proved the most popular in terms of page views.

Here’s a list, then, of the 50 most viewed posts I scribbled for Hard-Boiled Poker in 2013:

1. 2013 WSOP Main Event Final Table Hole Cards (Complete) (11/6/13)
2. Exploring Obsessions in Alan Zweig’s Vinyl (1/16/13)
3. Strip Poker: An Exposé (5/3/13)
4. Men, Women, and Poker in A Streetcar Named Desire (3/1/13)
5. On Backing, Tracking, and Whether Tourney Reports Are Lacking (4/2/13)
6. Nothing Funner: New Trailer for Poker-Themed Runner, Runner (6/6/13)
7. Bret Harte’s “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” (3/29/13)
8. Put Your Funds on Lock Poker (And Throw Away the Key) (4/29/13)
9. Wanna Buy Some Play Chips? (10/15/13)
10. 2013 World Series of Poker Schedule (Day-by-Day) (5/29/13)

11. Raymer (and Media) Caught in a Sting (3/18/13)
12. PokerNews Introduces My Stack, New Chip-Reporting App (5/6/13)
13. What If Farha Calls? (1/24/13)
14. Lock’s Stock in Peril (5/9/13)
15. Duke on Decisions (4/23/13)
16. Entrants Lists and the WSOP (6/12/13)
17. Travel Report: 2012-13 WSOP-C Harrah’s Cherokee Main Event, Day 2 -- Giving Away Chips, Rocks (4/15/13)
18. An Academic Study of Online Poker Forums (2/26/13)
19. On Lindgren and “Rehab” (1/7/13)
20. Bags of Dreams (8/14/13)

21. Paul Newman and Poker (4/12/13)
22. 2013 WSOP, Day 25: Is That Who I Think It Is? (6/23/13)
23. Our Turn to Make Full Tilt Claims (3/14/13)
24. Ungrateful Gus; or, Hansen on High (1/3/13)
25. Stirring the High-Stakes MTT Pot (3/7/13)
26. U.S. Online Poker 2.0: Ultimate Poker Deals First Hand (4/30/13)
27. Hellmuth Wants to Draw Line in Sand (10/22/13)
28. More on Mario Puzo (4/24/13)
29. Poker and the Boy Scouts (4/26/13)
30. Chop Talk (10/7/13)

31. Correcting the Zoom (1/25/13)
32. What the Winner Said (11/7/13)
33. Epic Anniversary (3/1/13)
34. Linking Out (6/3/13)
35. Lou Reed’s Poker Face (10/28/13)
36. Seven Years of Good Luck (4/28/13)
37. Two-and-a-Half Years Later (Withdrawing from Full Tilt Poker) (10/3/13)
38. An American in Cuba: The Place of Poker in Havana (3/15/13)
39. Public Concerns (5/7/13)
40. 2013 WSOP, Day 21: Min Cash, Max Fun (6/19/13)

41. Two Thousand Posts Later (8/7/13)
42. A 100-Year-Old Poker Movie: A Cure for Pokeritis (3/22/13)
43. Poker Among the Ruins (9/24/13)
44. The Absent-Minded Poker Player (12/27/13)
45. Poker in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (4/19/13)
46. The Congressman Who Wrote a Poker Book (3/8/13)
47. Poker Geography (4/18/13)
48. 2013 WSOP, Day 43: Folding Kings (7/11/13)
49. Falling Out of Sync (8/9/13)
50. On Philip K. Dick's Time Out of Joint (2/12/13)

I wasn’t too surprised to see “2013 WSOP Main Event Final Table Hole Cards (Complete)” top the list, although I didn’t expect to see that one about Alan Zweig’s documentary Vinyl be the second-most viewed post written during the year. You could say both of those posts highlight similar themes, including collecting, organizing, and the quality of being obsessive. I guess I like them being the most popular 2013 posts, as they are both representative of the blog as a whole.

I like seeing certain other posts on this list, too, including the ones about films and literature, ones addressing various controversies and other interesting items from the world of poker, and a few sharing some diverting anecdotes from the tourney trail. I probably would’ve included most of them had I written the same sort of posts as before and done my own selecting of faves to highlight.

As I say I’m in a mood to change things around here in the new year, and so can’t promise I’ll stick to the same stubborn schedule of posting going forward. Incidentally, Vera has named our new farm “Flying Change Farm.” A flying change is a lead change in dressage in which the horse makes the switch in between strides. It also has some obvious connotations relating to the change we’re making with the move. It is possible I might be making some changes mid-stride around here, too, so stay tuned.

Meanwhile, many thanks again for stopping by here at Hard-Boiled Poker during 2013. And a Happy New Year to all!

Moving and Stuff

I’ve mentioned here a couple of times over recent weeks how Vera and I have gotten ourselves a farm on which to live and keep Vera’s horses. The move has been a long time coming, the culmination of years of talking and planning and looking and finally finding. Even once we found the right place it still took a few months to get everything in place.

And it’s great. Well worth it, we already know.

We’re already mostly moved in, although we’ve still got a few items left to go. The last few days especially have been filled with lots of to-and-fro-ing as we gradually trucked everything to the new place. For others Boxing Day was the 26th, but for us boxing day was really the 27th as we spent something like 12 hours straight that day filling an endless-seeming supply of cardboard cubes and taping them shut.

I’ll probably be writing more here about country life before too long. While neither of us ever were especially “city,” this move does represent a change of sorts as we’re now pretty well isolated. From our old place it was a five-minute walk to grocery stores and restaurants, but here it’ll be a decent-length drive to get anywhere.

Today, though, I’m more preoccupied with the whole process of moving and getting settled. Vera and I have done this together perhaps eight or nine times overall, although the last time we did was several years ago.

Moving always forces a person to reconsider his or her relationship to possessions, large and small. I always think of the George Carlin bit about “stuff” in which he expounds hilariously -- and insightfully -- on the wise observation that “a house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.”

There’s also that whole “this is your life” game that goes along with packing and unpacking all that stuff. I’ve had a few of those moments over the last couple of days where I’ve lingered over this or that item as it reminded me of a past experience.

The long path through graduate school and a teaching career has been heavily documented -- to absurd lengths, really, and I’m thinking already of a first use of that fire pit that was left for us here on the farm by the previous owners. So, too, are there a myriad of reminders of various highlights from this second career, the one in poker that more or less began right here on this blog.

So there’s the invitation to scrutinize one’s own materialism (or lack thereof). And there’s the memory lane stuff. But moving to a new place also engenders thoughts of the future, too, and the new projects and paths that lie ahead. The fact that our move is coinciding with the end of the calendar year is probably further heightening that tempation to make resolutions.

You know, about all the new stuff I’d like to do.

The Absent-Minded Poker Player

By now the story of the poker player who left a brown paper bag containing $300,000 in cash in a Las Vegas cab has no doubt made it to your usual news feed, whatever that may be. This is one of those that quickly spilled out from under the usual “poker news” heading and into mainstream reporting, in fact.

I imagine I wasn’t the only one having conversations with family members about it during the Christmas visits. The story was one of those “page two” items in our local papers around here where all of the “weird but true”-type stuff usually lands. I was asked if I knew who the player was -- “a famous 28-year-old professional poker player, whom officials weren't publicly identifying” -- and I said no but I imagined the answer to that question would be coming sooner than later.

The angle highlighted most prominently, of course, was the cab driver’s decision to return the money to the office of his cab company and their ultimately successful effort to get the cash back in the owner’s hands. The company then rewarded the driver $1,000 for his action. Not a bad fit at all for the “’tis-the-reason-for-the-season” narrative.

Meanwhile, within the poker community it sounds like a couple of less crucial subplots are occupying the thoughts of those responding to the story.

There’s the “how much did he tip?” question which makes the story into a version of the tourney-tipping debates that come up now and again regarding the relative generosity or stinginess of those earning big tournament paydays. The lucky player apparently tipped the cabbie $5 for a relatively short trip, but there’s no postscript as of yet noting whether there was any additional tipping after getting his cash returned.

Then there’s the question of who exactly the “famous 28-year-old professional poker player” actually is. I was amused yesterday by some of the guesses as well as 2013 World Series of Poker Main Event runner-up Jay Farber’s impatient denials after several seemed sure he must’ve been the one.

Sort of interesting to follow the latter discussion, in particular the sleuthing some are employing when narrowing down possible candidates. On one level it’s just another bit of problem-solving, not unlike that which poker itself provides for us in the form of considering available (and incomplete) evidence in an attempt to guess opponents’ possible holdings.

But there’s also that sense of schadenfreude that characterizes a lot of railbirding happening here, too, I think, wherein people want to know where to direct their derision. After all, if one of the great pleasures of watching poker is to witness players make especially clever strategic decisions, a close second has to be watching them mistakes, too, right?

The Art of War

Enjoying a little down time here over the holidays, including spending some quality hours with my four-and-a-half-year-old nephew as I mentioned I would be doing last post.

He and I did manage to get in a few rounds’ worth of “War” when he wasn’t busy playing Skylanders. He mastered the rules for “War” very quickly, including sorting out how the face cards rank and how jokers were wild. He’s also figured out how to save out an ace or joker for himself to use at key moments, such as when “battles” arise, being very creative in the way he’ll innocently slide the card out from under the pile.

We laugh about his not-quite-allowed-within-the-rules strategy of choosing cards to play, both acknowledging it fully. It’s interesting, actually, to observe how besides being pretty quick to understand games, he’s competitive, too, wanting to win but seemingly a good sport when losing. A little later we played Tic-Tac-Toe on a stocking stuffer wooden game and I couldn’t help but laugh when he left me an opening to beat him once, then shot a hand down over the spot where I was about to make my last move.

Those who are parents know a lot more than I do about how this process of learning games works with children, including the usual milestones of understanding how to play them, what winning and losing is, and eventually what it means to play by the rules and the importance of doing so. My understanding is my nephew is still probably a year or two away from reaching that last stage, as that doesn’t necessarily come (for most) until kids get to be primary school age.

Was kind of marveling, though, at how the moment he noticed he’d left me that opening to make three across he slapped the hand down -- entirely instinctive, that, and something we adults can identify with whenever we make a mistake and think initially of trying to correct it.

I’m thinking it won’t be that long before my nephew and I start talking about poker hands and how three of a kind beats two pair. Then after that we’ll get out the chips, too. That’s when I’ll definitely have to watch out to make sure he doesn’t keep an ace or joker hidden in his tiny sleeve.

Christmas Time Is Here Again

Had a fun day yesterday visiting with family in a couple of different locations, and today am looking forward to another round of visiting including hanging out some with my super-smart nephew who’ll be turning five in February.

Was teaching him some card games the last time we got to spend extended time together, including “War.” Might have to break out the cards again today although I have a feeling he’s going to be plenty occupied with other presents.

A big part of the fun yesterday was watching several young children of cousins giddy with joy over various presents they’d received. One two-year-old darling received a toy nurse’s set with various plastic items like a stethoscope, a thermometer, and a reflex hammer. Big grins watching her administer a check-up to my septugenarian father who was a patient patient.

Christmas is most definitely a kid’s game. Like poker, I guess. Here’s hoping you get either to spend some time with a kid today or at least be able to relax and perhaps feel like one for a while. Speaking of, I think I see a spot over on the couch and I believe there’s some basketball to watch a little later.

O-U-T spells out.

OFCP at the WSOP?

A quick hello here mainly to wish all a happy Xmas eve as Vera and I are about to go spend time with folks today and tomorrow.

I think I might’ve mentioned here at some point how we’ve bought ourselves a farm on which to keep Vera’s horses and are preparing for the move in the coming days. That to the left is an early present from your humble scribbler to his beloved, something I think will be getting a lot of use once we make the move. (I’ll have to start signing off as “Old McShamus.”)

Meanwhile, I was intrigued by the Twitter discussion yesterday regarding Open-Face Chinese Poker and the possibility of it being added to the 2014 World Series of Poker schedule as a bracelet event. Ended up posting a little summary of the discussion over on Learn.PokerNews this morning, including adding a poll question at the bottom about it. Take a look and perhaps click “yes” or “no” at the end, if you like clicking things and I know you do.

The most interesting part of the debate, I think, is how some are arguing OFCP isn’t really “poker” because it doesn’t involve betting (in the traditional sense) or appear to provide opportunities for bluffing. I think both counts might be debated somewhat, although I tend to agree that the game strikes me as being a lot more like gin rummy or even spades or hearts than it does poker, even if it does involve making poker hands.

I probably lean toward the group who oppose making OFCP a bracelet event, especially so soon after being introduced to the majority of those who play it. I do like the game, and in fact not long ago downloaded the “ABC Chinese Poker: Open Face” app which I’ve enjoyed playing quite a bit. If you have the app, find me and let’s play -- I’m “ShortStackedShamus” there in the Game Center thingy.

But like I say, I’m dubious about OFCP’s inclusion as a WSOP bracelet event for most of the same reasons others have voiced. I also am not sure adequate tournament rules have been devised for the game yet, either, another reason to think twice about adding it at the WSOP.

Anyhow, check out that summary of yesterday’s debate and let me know what you think about it all. Meanwhile, we need to load up the wheelbarrow with gifts for our travels today. Enjoy the day, all!

The Way the Football Bounces

Still on a high after the Panthers’ big win yesterday versus New Orleans, with that last lightning-quick winning TD drive having played out so quickly I’m still not even sure it happened.

Carolina is now playoff-bound for the first time since Jake Delhomme was behind center, and folks are starting to recall to each other the big run from a decade ago that landed the Panthers in the Super Bowl where they were involved in one of the most memorable finales in NFL history. (The halftime show that year was pretty memorable, too.)

Was reading a few different pieces last week about the Panthers’ season, including an interesting one over on the Football Perspective website asking “How Good Are the Panthers?” The piece does a lot of comparing of numbers from this season and last for Carolina, ultimately concluding with the support of the stats what all of us who have been watching the games already well knew.

“In 2012, nearly all the breaks went against the Panthers,” writes the author, Chase Stuart, after having established that in most respects the team was essentially as productive in just about every area last year as it has been this time around. “On a per-play basis, Carolina was a very good team, and perhaps one of the best in the league,” says Stuart, yet somehow they started 2-8, ended 7-9, and missed the playoffs by a mile.

This year they started 1-3, are now 11-4, and with a victory next week against Atlanta can tie a franchise record for wins. And as Stuart notes, the difference can mostly be traced via a handful of plays that went the wrong way for Carolina in 2012 but have gone differently in 2013. “For the second year in a row, Carolina has found out that what happens on a few plays can make all the difference in a season,” he concludes.

I won’t specifically recite all of the plays. That stirring 14-yard pass completion from Cam Newton to Domenik Hixon in the endzone yesterday with 23 seconds left was certainly one of them. But it wouldn’t be hard to locate them among the several agonizing losses last year and the many dramatic victories this season.

As a kind of weird emblem for how things went for the Panthers in 2012, they lost the first 13 start-of-game coin tosses last year (!). Talk about bad bounces. Meanwhile I know this year they were enjoying a streak of winning eight straight coin tosses at one point (through the first nine games), which is similarly nuts. (And weirdly symbolic.)

It is uncanny the extent to which the Panthers’ results from last year to this can be likened to having played a hand exactly the same way twice, losing the first and winning the next. The same can be said for most of the league, though, with only a few exceptions. Every team heading into Week 17 can point to a handful of plays that decided their fate, just like only a few hands -- or even one -- tend to dictate a winning or losing session or tournament.

Talking 2014 WSOP (Already)

Saw that announcement yesterday regarding dates for the 2014 World Series of Poker. No schedule of events just yet -- that usually comes later, anyway -- but we did get the word that as usual things will get kicked off at the end of May and run through mid-July (from 5/27 to 7/14 this time), and once more they’ll be back at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino.

Was almost surprising to read in the presser that this will mark the 10th straight year the WSOP will be at the Rio, even though it’s easy enough to recall how it was 2005 that the move first occurred, with only the last couple of days of the Main Event that year (won by Joe Hachem) playing out back at Binion’s as a kind of last hurrah.

Not too much else of note in the announcement. The Main Event will again feature three Day 1 flights. The full slate of “deep stack” tourneys and cash games will be on offer again throughout the summer, with buy-ins as low as $75 for some tourneys. And of course this year will be the first for which players on WSOP.com in both Nevada and New Jersey will be able to satellite into events, a wrinkle that should get more attention throughout the winter and spring.

There are a few hints dropped about what the schedule will contain, including another one of those “Millionaire Maker” events (a $1,500 tourney with a first-prize guaranteed to be at least $1 milly), a second “Big One for One Drop” with the $1 million buy-in (already announced), and another “Little One for One Drop” (with a $1,111 buy-in and unlimited re-entries).

No indication of a total number of events, although there is mention that there will be “60+ official gold bracelet events,” thus suggesting a schedule not too different from years past.

That said, some tweets from WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart (@wsopSUITd) from about a month ago suggested the so-called “Matt Glantz” plan proposed in a piece appearing in Card Player back in June is getting some consideration. That’s the idea to jettison the mid-range buy-ins ($2,500 and $5,000) and instead have both $1,500 and $10,000 events for all of the major variants, with the latter designated as “championship” events.

“Debate. What are ‘core’ disciplines outside NLHE that merit WSOP championship event? Ten right now on the table (1/2) - Agree?” tweeted Stewart back on November 20, who then followed with “Limit HE, PLHE, PLO, O8OB, 7-Stud, 7-Stud 8OB, Razz, 2-7, 2-7 TD, HORSE. For the much discussed 1500/10k framework. Sked coming 2gether.”

I think I like the $1.5K/$10K idea well enough, although the true test of it will come via those field sizes next summer. Meanwhile, we’ll have to wait and see how the actual schedule ends up shaping up, but it does sound like we might anticipate a lot of $1,500 events, a handful of $10,000 ones (in each of those disciplines), with the non-HE games thus covered in that way and the rest of the schedule again filled with NLHE tourneys of various shapes and sizes.

The Durrrration of the Poker Spotlight

Was thinking a little about that news this week of Tom “durrrr” Dwan parting ways with Full Tilt Poker 2.0. Dwan is no longer one of the site’s three sponsored “Professionals,” leaving Gus Hansen and Viktor Blom to carry forward as the site’s primary player-reps.

PokerListings got the word from an FTP spokesperson a few days ago, noting how Dwan hadn’t been part of some FTP-related recent events alongside his fellow “Professionals.”

Another story on PL referred to the long-in-limbo “Durrrr Challenge” between Dwan and Daniel “Jungleman12” Cates and what appears little likelihood of its continuance. That article included an interview with Cates who seems like he is more or less shrugging his shoulders and saying “wtf” over and again in response to questions about the status of the pair’s competition.

Like both Hansen (long ago) and Blom (more recently), Dwan had his moment of being the focus of much of the poker’s world attention for a short period just a few years back.

Dwan first got on the radar for most of us around 2008, particularly after ousting Phil Hellmuth in the first round of the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, luckily cracking the Poker Brat’s pocket aces with a pair of tens, then watching Hellmuth predictably crack up himself afterwards.

Then the “Dwan era” dawned in earnest right around early 2009 with the launching of the first Challenge (versus Patrik Antonius), followed shortly thereafter by a celebrated appearance on High Stakes Poker a month later that included one hand in particular that seemingly had everyone buzzing for months.

I wrote a post here about the hand then titled “Tom’s Adventures in Wondurrrrland” (creating the graphic to the left for the occasion). Those who saw it remember it well -- a crazy eight-way hand that saw Dwan, Barry Greenstein, and Peter Eastgate make it to the turn with Dwan holding the worst hand of the three (behind Eastgate’s trips and Greenstein’s pocket aces), yet somehow getting the other two to fold after his fourth-street bet.

It was later that year Blom emerged -- or rather, his alter ego “Isildur1” did -- to take over the poker spotlight from Dwan, but not after the then-23-year-old had somehow gotten himself nominated for the Poker Hall of Fame by some zealous visitors to the WSOP’s website.

Right around that time -- late 2009 -- Dwan became a Team Full Tilter, a designation that lasted until April 2011 and Black Friday. A relative newcomer to FTP’s shameful circle of owners and mismanagers, Dwan was more or less on the outside with the rest of us (or appeared so) in the months following Black Friday, and particularly after the amended indictment and civil complaint came in September 2011 that more specifically damned FTP Version 1.0, Dwan’s association with the site faded quickly only to be revived a year later with the FTP’s second incarnation and the “Professionals” signing.

It’s all sort of felt like an extended anticlimax after that blockbuster beginning for Dwan. All of those forces that helped create a poker celebrity of him so quickly -- the online game and televised poker, especially -- have now waned considerably when it comes to influence and image-shaping. Now we’re more or less in an era when conspicuous tourney successes seem to be the primary means to poker stardom (be it brief or lasting), with live wins much more capable of creating “stars” than online ones.

Dwan is still winning online. And he’s playing live, too, although it sounds like much of it has been at the high-stakes cash games in Macau, more or less out of the purview of those who might be curious to make him the subject of forum threads and other “railbird reports.”

I was as fascinated as everyone else by Dwan for those few months a few years ago, and am still somewhat curious about what he might do next. But his departure from FTP 2.0 and its team of “Professionals” inspires thoughts of how the whole idea of poker celebs -- that different class of poker “professionals” -- once such a very effective construct of online sites and abetted ably by the TV shows the sites sponsored, seems like something from an earlier era.

On the Fast Track at EPT Prague

Am trying to get some work done today while following the final table at the European Poker Tour Main Event in Prague via the EPTLive stream on PokerStars.tv. There are four players remaining at the moment with the German Julian Track currently sitting in first position by a decent-sized margin.

Track took the chip lead into today’s final day of play after a blindingly-fast penultimate day saw 22 play down to eight in less than two 90-minute levels. Lots of aggressive play helped increase the rapidity of the bustouts, including a kind of wild hand involving Track and Ori Hasson of Israel that gave the former the chip lead.

The blinds were 20,000/40,000, and preflop machinations between the pair saw Hasson five-bet shoving for close to 3.8 million (about 95 big blinds) with and Track calling for almost that much with . The tens held, and a little while later Hasson hit the rail in 12th.

It was the biggest pot of the tournament to that point and also the one everyone seemed to be buzzing about afterwards with many surprised that both players would commit such deep stacks with those two hands.

The hand made me think of witnessing a lot of similar decisions being made with around 100 players left in the WSOP Main Event over the years, during that nether period well after the money bubble has burst but still a long way away from the final few tables. I’m talking about those hands that see players five- or six-betting all in with A-K or J-J with stacks of 1 million or more and blinds at 4,000/8,000 or thereabouts.

I haven’t been following the action all week nor do I have much feel for how Track or Hasson had been playing hands leading up to their big confrontation on Tuesday, so there obviously could be relevant context for their decisions.

Even so, I think in tournaments sometimes there emerges this interesting kind of collective momentum that can affect players in various ways, including speeding up their play. Yesterday several had just been knocked out in short order when the Track-Hasson hand occurred, and I think when that happens occasionally players in certain situations are oddly encouraged to gamble more when opportunities arise.

The same happens with slowing down, too, as I suppose one could say is being evidenced here at four-handed with the remaining players appearing to exercise a lot of patience at present. The deep stacks make it easier to slow down, too, of course, although both Track and Hasson were mighty deep when they put their tourney lives on the line yesterday with pocket tens and ace-queen, respectively.

Will see if Track can keep it on the rails to victory later today. Click over to EPTLive on PokerStars.tv to watch, too.