Cards from Coast to Coast

Had a chance not too long ago to have a fun conversation with poker player and author Ashley Adams. He has been writing about poker for some time including authoring a couple of strategy books and contributing some strategy articles over at PokerNews. He also hosts the House of Cards Radio podcast, a weekly show that often features interesting guests. In fact just last week he had WSOP Main Event champion Joe McKeehen not long after his big win.

Ashley has been playing poker for over half-century. Since the early 1990s, he’s been especially dedicated to the game, having played in many different countries and all around the United States. About a decade ago he realized he’d played in more than half of the states in the U.S., and soon thereafter made it a goal to try to play in all 50 of them.

About a month ago Ashley achieved that goal, with Oregon being the last state in which he managed to play America’s favorite card game. At the very least he’s tied a record, for certain. A couple of weeks later he and I had a conversation about his journey, and you can read the interview over at PokerNews here: “An American Odyssey: Ashley Adams Completes 50-State Poker Tour.”

Our conversation covered a lot of ground (pun intended). I asked him to comment on different playing styles in different areas of the country, kind of half-anticipating some generalities about “east coast” and “west coast” games. But interestingly he pointed out how the game has been somewhat “homogenized” over the last decade or so, primarily because of the “boom” and spread of televised poker, as well as the overall increase in knowledge of strategy.

Ashley has plans to write a book about his poker journey, which I think is a great idea. I also can imagine making use of such a book in my “Poker in American Film and Culture class,” where we learn a lot about how poker was played in the past in a few regions -- in particular New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Nevada, and California, and a little bit of New Jersey -- but don’t necessarily get too much into contemporary poker culture including home games (an area in which Ashley perhaps has a more varied experience than just about anybody).

Check out the interview for more.

Season of the Witch

Sometimes in all-in situations, say, when there’s one last river card to come, players will entertain themselves by calling out specific cards a beat before the card is revealed. “Eight of diamonds!” will shout a player, enacting a kind of prognosticator’s freeroll that gets promptly ignored if wrong, but celebrated if somehow the guess proves correct.

That celebration is usually forgotten fairly quickly, too, as it should be. But it still can add up to a fun moment for those involved, the way it goofily suggests the gambler’s dream of extra-normal powers of perception.

Last week while in Brazil, I was chatting with Reinaldo on Wednesday about the upcoming NFL games. He and I are both in the same Pigskin Pick’em pool and while we’re both far out of the running overall, we’re neck-and-neck with each other, and so are having some fun going back and forth about which of us will end the season with more correct picks out of the 256 total NFL regular season games.

My Carolina Panthers played on Thanksgiving, and somewhat hilariously were an underdog to the Dallas Cowboys despite Carolina being 10-0 going into the game while Dallas was 3-7. The reason for the line, of course, was the fact that Dallas starting QB Tony Romo was back in the line-up, and so far during the year Dallas had lost exactly zero games when he’d played (three) and won exactly zero when he hadn’t (seven).

Laying on a little bit of fan-fueled hyperbole, I pretended to express outrage about the Panthers being somehow disrespected by such a line. But in truth I knew the Panthers outmatched Dallas, even with Romo. “The Panthers will roll tomorrow,” I told Reinaldo. “In fact, they’ll knock Romo out of the game.”

As I mentioned last week, we were able to keep tabs on the T-giving games while at the tournament, and so I greatly enjoyed watching Carolina fulfill my prediction as they jumped in front of Dallas, then continued to pull away as the third quarter neared its close. It was about that time I shot my buddy Rich Ryan a message.

“Saw this coming all the way from South America,” I boasted. “I’m just surprised they haven’t knocked Romo out of the game yet.”

Less than a minute after I hit send, Romo was sacked hard by Thomas Davis, reinjuring his collarbone and having to leave the game. Indeed, his season is over.

“Sick timing brah,” replied Rich before I could even fire back an “ahem” to punctuate the uncanny coincidence of the message.

Reinaldo was impressed as well, and after asking me what the male equivalent of a witch is, promptly called me a warlock. (That picture up above, by the way, is one of your humble scribbler from long ago, one Vera coincidentally found while I was gone.)

Even though I have no particular feelings about Dallas, I’ve always liked Romo. And even if I didn’t, I obviously was not glad to have seen him get hurt. Even so I’ll admit to having experienced the momentary, frivolous pleasure that comes with guessing correctly.

Thanksgiving, DVR’d

The flights home were fine yesterday and I made it home safe and more or less sound.

Between the longish ride to the São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport (about an hour-and-a-half), the flight to Miami where I had a couple of hours’ layover, the flight home, then the drive after that (nearly another hour), it took something close to 20 hours to get all the way back.

Everything went relatively smoothly, though, save one moment right at the start of the trip when checking in. “There’s a problem with your ticket,” said the agent, letting me brood on that for close to 10 minutes before it was finally determined that there was no problem at all. It was enough time to make me feel grateful afterwards for what has been a relatively lengthy period of run good (literally), all things considered, when it has come to all of my trips.

Was glad to reunite with Vera and all of our four-legged friends on the farm, then tonight she surprised me with a belated Thanksgiving dinner (pictured above). It was like she DVR’d the meal for me to enjoy once I got back. The only thing missing was football on the tube, although as I mentioned before that was the one part of the holiday I didn’t miss while in Brazil.

Will get back to poker stuff, tomorrow. For now I’m thankful for everyone in Brazil who made my trip a good one, thankful to be home, and thankful for the slice of pumpkin pie that awaits.

Travel Report: LAPT8 Brazil, Day 4 -- A Sizable Bridge, a Small Bet, and Saying Bye

It’s a wrap. Yuri Martins, probably Brazil’s most successful online player, won the Latin American Poker Tour Grand Final in São Paulo on Sunday. It’s the biggest live score for Martins, and came at the end of an often interesting final table. In fact, there was one hand that was so interesting it turned out to be too strange to be true.

Afonse Henrique, also of Brazil (São Paulo, in fact), had led most of the day after starting the final table with a small chip lead over a couple of others, including Martins. In fact, at one point after a couple of hours’ worth of play Henrique actually had more than half of the total chips with eight players still left -- up around 6.5 million when the next highest had only about 1.5 million. Not sure I’ve seen that happen at a final table before (not live, anyway).

At the start of heads-up, though, Martins had scored the most recent two knockouts to take over the lead. Then Henrique earned a big double-up and after chipping up some more had Martins on the ropes, but the latter climbed back again.

At a lot of final tables reporters end up relying on live streams to follow the action as it isn’t always feasible to be near the table. Such was the case here, and my buddy Reinaldo (blogging in Spanish for the PokerStars blog) and I were kind of amazed to see one heads-up hand play out the way it did. Or seem to, that is.

I won’t narrate all the particulars, but the key bit of weirdness came when Martins appeared to have just 120,000 behind with about 5 million in the middle, then on the turn bet his last chips. Then Henrique folded, which seemed especially odd given the more than 40-to-1 pot odds being offered on a call.

It reminded me of playing for pennies online back in the day, where such hands would actually happen sometimes. You’d bet your last three cents into a four-dollar pot, and somehow your opponent would fold. As it turned out, they had things miscalculated somewhat on the stream -- Martins bet 1.2 million and earned the fold, not just 120,000 -- something we confirmed after following up. We had to find out for sure, it just seemed too strange to be believed.

It made me think of a post I’d written here several years ago about how sometimes exceedingly weird plays happen in tournaments, and when they do the reporter is in a tricky spot because even though true the report’s accuracy will necessarily be doubted. (Can’t put my finger on that post right now, but if I do I’ll come back and link here.)

Was still kind of an interesting fold, but not as wacky as it had seemed before. In any case, the hand was something of a momentum-shifter, and it wasn’t that long before Martins took the sucker down.

I actually was able to get out a little before play began on Sunday, walking about and snapping a few photos although there wasn’t too much to see. There is one of the photos above, of the nearby 453-foot tall Octavio Frias de Oliveira bridge that spans the Pinheiros River.

Lots of mopeds and bicyclists, lots of graffiti, lots of construction (and what looked like downed power lines, although I doubt they were live), and lots of clouds. In fact it began storming pretty hard just after I got back to the hotel, luckily missing getting doused.

Got done early enough to have one last nice dinner with Reinaldo and Sergio (who blogs in Portuguese and handles media coordinator duties, too). We snapped one last shot before leaving the Golden Hall, with the tables still ragin’ full on with the BSOP Millions having several days left to go.

Flying all day Monday. Check back through the PokerStars blog for those last reports from Brazil, and I’ll talk to you again from back in North America.

Travel Report: LAPT8 Brazil, Day 3 -- Winding Down

The original schedule for the Latin American Poker Tour Grand Final in São Paulo, Brazil actually had Day 4 marked “if needed,” although it was pretty clear from early on in the tournament that they would need it.

Even so, when things got to moving relatively quickly on Saturday’s Day 3 -- the day when typically they’d play from 32 players down to the eight-handed final table -- there was some talk perhaps of continuing down to less than eight players so as to make Sunday a little shorter. That talk went away, though, once the pace slowed down again and everything wound up about midnight, making for the first less-than-10-hour workday we’ve had this week.

There were three former LAPT Main Event champs left among the 32 -- Alex Manzano, Patricio Rojas, and Caio Hey (who won LAPT Brazil last year) -- but none made it to today’s final table. Six Brazilians and two Chileans did, with Afonso Henrique leading.

Of the group, the best known left are the short stack Bruno Kawauti who finished 15th in the 2013 WSOP Main Event, Ricardo Chauriye who made the LAPT Peru final table this year, Andrés “gmcrafter” Herrera whose won a lot online, and Yuri “theNERDguy” Martins who has won a lot more online. Martins has like $5 million in online earnings, including finishing second to Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz in the 2014 WCOOP Main Event.

The day was pretty much all business with a lot of back-and-forthing from the laptop to the tournament area to keep up with the action. I had a picture of the Golden Hall in yesterday’s post, the enormous tournament room with 151 tables, all pretty much filled by the other BSOP Millions events including the Main Event of that festival. Makes for a crazy atmosphere, even as the LAPT Grand Final has gotten down to the last few tables and become a more intimate-seeming affair.

Meanwhile my plans for exploring São Paulo some before I go have been sidetracked somewhat by weather and other factors. We’re kind of locked inside the business district here in the southern part of the sprawling city, with nothing much for pedestrians to see beyond the surrounding buildings -- mostly offices -- and traffic. And without much extra time it’s hard to get out to do other things, so it may be I’ll have to wait until the next visit down for that.

Still, I’m eating especially well and very much enjoying meeting new people and hanging/working with the LAPT guys. More tomorrow. Meanwhile, check the PokerStars blog today to see who comes out on top in the LAPT Grand Final.

Travel Report: LAPT8 Brazil, Day 2 -- Part of the Crowd

It was a third straight long day behind the laptop, and now the 426-entry field is down to just 32 players at the Latin American Poker Tour Grand Final in São Paulo.

There’s still a lot of extracurricular activity happening all around the featured tournament, with workshops, numerous side events, and the start of the Brazilian Series of Poker Main Event which like others in this BSOP Millions festival promises to feature an enormous field.

I’ve had a few conversations over the last few days both with Brazilians and others about the thriving poker scene here in Brazil. Everyone has been very friendly all week and especially accommodating of my sad lack of Portuguese, and I’ve enjoyed having these discussions and at least getting to know a bit about poker’s place in the culture, even if I haven’t gotten to explore much else as yet.

While São Paulo is kind of a central hub, there are numerous large cities (many nice vacation destinations, too) where poker is continuing to grow, and just the sight of something like what is pictured above makes it hard to deny poker’s prominence here.

You can click that photo to see a larger-sized image, one taken by the great Carlos Monti (in the center below). I am in there -- play “Where’s Shamus?” by looking to the upper right, just between the “Dourado / Golden” sign hanging down and the tournament clock. There I am, against the wall wearing a white shirt.

There are a 151 tables in the Golden Hall here in the World Trade Center São Paulo complex, and there have been many times when every single one of them has been in use.

The body clock is completely thrown off now, as I find I’m waking up early despite the late finishes. Still, I can’t help but be energized by the atmosphere, and with several big names from the LAPT still among the Grand Final field I’m as curious as anyone to see what happens over the next two days.

Check the PokerStars blog for more reports on the Grand Final.

Travel Report: LAPT8 Brazil, Day 1b -- Reading, Writing, 'Rithmetic, Rast

Was another long one yesterday at the Latin American Poker Tour Grand Final here in São Paulo, where Day 1b played out and we weren’t finished until about 4 a.m.

The day was a lot of fun, though, for a few reasons. One was the fact that Reinaldo had the NFL games streaming on his iPad all day. They began just after play started at 3 p.m. here, and ended just before they bagged and tagged. That and also getting to enjoy a delicious dinner of picanha with Rei helped simulate the Thanksgiving experience somewhat I was missing back home.

Had a couple of fun conversations yesterday, one with Brian Rast who is here playing his first ever LAPT event.

Rast has been spending a lot of time in Brazil over the last five-plus years, having first come down in 2010 and then meeting his eventual wife who is from Paraíba. He hasn’t played a lot of poker here, though, and so this is a somewhat new experience for him. Carlos our photographer snuck a photo of us talking -- that’s me above asking Rast what it feels like to win $7.5 million in a poker tournament as he did in early July. (Spoiler alert: pretty damn good.)

A little later I also had the opportunity to talk with a very friendly fellow named Cristiano Torezzan who teached applied mathematics at the University of Campinas, the huge state-run university system here in Brazil. He has a elective course he’s been offering there since 2013 called “Poker Basics” which uses poker to teach about decision-making, math-related concepts, and other interesting metagame matters.

We also talked about my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class, and shared a lot of notes on what it’s like “teaching poker” in a college class -- that is, using the game to explore other non-poker ideas as well as to teach non-poker “basics,” too. Only a little of our conversation made it into the post I wrote about him and his class. You can check it out, though, to learn more about his interesting course.

Gotta sign off quickly again here as we’re less than a couple of hours away from cranking back up again. There are 202 players left from what turned out to be a bigger than expected 426-entry field. Head to the PokerStars blog and peruse around to see what else happened the last two days and to follow what happens going forward.

Travel Report: LAPT8 Brazil, Day 1a -- Late to Bed, Late to Rise

I was speaking confidently yesterday about how thanks to my personal internal clock still being on Eastern time -- i.e., three hours behind the time here in São Paulo, Brazil -- the 3 p.m. start to Day 1a of the Latin American Poker Tour Grand Final and 3 a.m. finish wouldn’t be too much of a problem for me.

Of course, once we actually got to 3 a.m. this morning and play finally wound down for the night, such enthusiasm had diminished somewhat as tiredness began to set in. Was actually pushing 4 a.m. before getting back to the room, and it took another hour after that to wind down and get some sleep.

Even so, I’m not too fatigued as I type this morning. The R$10,000 buy-in tournament featured a decent turnout yesterday of 132 total entries (including reentries), with a little less than half of them making it through to Friday’s Day 2. Armando Sbrissa, brother of Victor Sbrissa who actually won the LAPT Brazil Main Event here two years ago, ended the night as the chip leader.

There was a fun celebrity tournament as well yesterday that we gave some attention to in the coverage, with Brazilian footballer legend Ronaldo taking part and almost winning the sucker (he ultimately finished runner-up). Ronaldo definitely has some poker skills, having made that deep run in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event back in January (finishing 26th) and winning another celebrity tournament in Macau recently. He’ll be back at the PCA a couple of months, I’m told.

There should be considerably more entries today, perhaps even twice as many, so things should be busier and thus the day perhaps will roll on past a little more quickly. Or at least feel that way, as we’re necessarily going to be wrapping up around the same time again. Meanwhile I’m hoping to follow some NFL during the day, especially that Panthers-Cowboys game. Will feel a little strange to be away from home and not having turkey, sweet potatoes, and the like as usual.

In any case, when someone throws the red challenge flag today and they are spending time under the hood reviewing the last play, click over to the PokerStars blog for updates to see how things are going for us here in Brazil.

Travel Report: LAPT8 Brazil, Pregame -- Settling In

Stuck close to the Sheraton World Trade Center yesterday, my home-away-from-home until Monday. That’s a partial shot of my view to the left, the Brazilian flag flapping in the breeze atop the Gran Estanplaza hotel across the way.

Likely will continue to stay close to the WTC for much of my stay this week in São Paulo. Not ideal for sight-seeing, although it’s good work-wise given that by being on site the journey to and from the tournament will be a short one for me each day as I help cover the Latin American Poker Tour Grand Final.

I will get out some before the week is done, though, as Reinaldo and I have made plans one morning to get over to the nearby park and try to see more than just the surrounding buildings and sidewalks and bridge spanning the Rio Pinheiros.

Last night was great fun, the three-hour time difference giving me extra energy through a late dinner with Sergio, Rei, and Carlos. Had an especially tasty fish-and-rice dish -- pescada amarela em crosta de améndoas -- washed down with a can of Guaraná Antarctica, while enjoing the conversation consisting of equal parts reminiscing, catching up, and looking ahead.

I even thought I’d be staying up to catch the Warriors crushing the Lakers -- available on SporTV here -- but I just couldn’t keep my eyes open much past the 1:30 a.m. tipoff. The time difference is actually going to suit me well, given that the days will be going from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. (which for me is essentially noon to midnight).

Not sure really what to expect for the Grand Final, which sports a buy-in of R$10,000 (about $2,650 USD). I know the surrounding BSOP events are going to be swamped, with thousands playing the kickoff one with just a R$460 price tag. Will find out soon enough.

Heading down to the Golden Hall for today’s play, the first of two Day 1 flights. Check out the PokerStars blog to follow along.

Travel Report: LAPT8 Brazil, Arrival -- Obrigado-giving

Earlier today a steel winged tube floated down through the gray skies enveloping southeastern Brazil, bringing me to São Paulo where I’ll be settled through the Thanksgiving holiday and weekend for the Latin American Poker Tour Grand Final, the culminating stop of the tour’s eighth season.

The flights overnight were fine and I even managed to spend a few hours along the way in a restful state simulating sleep. Was still a bit lagged, though, for much of the hour-and-a-half ride from the GRU (the São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport) up at the northern top of the enormous, sprawling city down to my destination on the southern edge of SP.

We’re situated not far from the Rio Pinheiros, the tributary that winds through the city. I think the name means “Pine River,” which leads me to assume there are some pines somewhere to be seen if one were to follow the sucker long enough. But here in the heart of the city there’s nothing but concrete, metal, and glass all about.

Haven’t done much more so far than to get unpacked and cleaned up, secure some reais, and devour one tasty meat-potatoes-and-rice dish down in the food court. One thing I’ve realized already in the space of just a few hours -- I haven’t the first idea about Portuguese. That’s not entirely true. I do know obrigado, which has come in handy already after my stumbly, murmur-filled pointing somehow gets interpreted correctly.

Gonna rest a little more now, then hopefully reunite with some amigos for another meal in a while. More mañana. Or make that amanhã.