2012.06

At 3pm on Saturday we had 13 people scheduled to show up for the night's tournament.

By 7pm that number had ballooned to 23.

I must say I greatly appreciate all the "maybe" people calling me before they did show up.  I also am thankful that last minute "yes" people also called.

It was a balmy night and the garage door stayed open.  The action inside was hot and heavy as well.  2011 Player of the Year Dog D. continued his dance with the bad side of variance in 2012 by hitting the rail first, his overpair losing to an underpair via' a 3 outer from hell just after the break.

As usual, the bust outs came slow at first and then quickly picked up speed - we broke the third table 5 minutes before the second break and were down to a final table by 11pm.

Lots of newer faces graced the bright green felt (feature table felt at the 2010 WSOP that is) - and the top finishers were among them.

Our DVD bubble was Dan G. who couldn't contain his excitement in picking up the remake of "Flight of the Phoenix", especially because it was on Blu-Ray!

First to cash, getting his entry fee back, was POY points leader (by a lot at this point) Mike P.

Next to get monies was brand spankin' new player and swell guy Carlos T. who snagged $60 and a hearty hand-shake.  A big thanks to R.J. for bringing Carlos on board.

In fourth place for $100 was long time no see poker playa Christie W.G., whose husband (PSP regular) Jeff G. finally let her out of the house to play some cards.  It was a delight to have her, and also delightful was that she brought another friendly player Donna S.

I hope both new players had a good time and will be back soon!

In third place was Hugh B., a friendly fella who has been playing at Pepper St. for awhile, but only  a couple of times a year.  This was Hugh's first final table and cash - $140.  Well done Hugh!

And then there were two.  Jeff S. had amassed a mountain of chips and held a six to one chip lead over Wisnick L.   As it was just after midnight, they agreed to chop the money, with Jeff taking $275 and Wisnick $225.

Funny enough, Wisnick had $30 in bounty monies, so he ended up nearly even in cash with Jeff.  But as Jeff was a big leader in chips he got the greatest gift of all - the glory of a PSP trophy!   Well done both of y'all!

The bad news is that my July is completely absent of any free Saturday or Friday nights.

The good news is that I do have a Sunday afternoon free - and since it's July that can only mean one thing - BBQ!

Sunday, July 22 at NOON, we will be grilling meat and stuffing it into our mouths.  Hot Dogs and Burgers.  If you want a different kind of meat in your mouth, ya gotta bring it.  Snacks and sodas provided - bring your favorite side and your own booze if you want.

The tournament will be a bit different.  Since we have all day it will be a Deep Stack event, with 20K in starting chips.   $40 with a $5 bounty game as usual.  Cards will be in the air at 1pm.

A 1K bonus chip is yours to keep if you arrive to socialize by 12:30 at the latest.   There will of course be a cash game table available, which will probably go - as it did last night.  I'm also going to try to have a second chance H.O.R.S.E. tournament going for $20 at 5pm.  This may or may not go, hopefully cash game playing degenerates will still be around and want to partake.

In the mean time I'm going to Vegas next weekend, I'll be there from 6/28 through the morning of 7/3.  I would love to see you and maybe hang out when we're not playing pokerz.   Hope you can make it!

80 Percent.

So I had to go to Colorado for work for 10 days.  The Golden Gates casino in Blackhawk had pretty awesome $120 tournaments every night at 7:30.  Unfortunately, we were in Denver which was an hour away and then mid-trip we moved to Colorado Springs which was nearly a two hour drive from Blackhawk.  I couldn't really justify the gas money on a company vehicle.  Plus I was always too tired to go anyway.  So no poker for 10 days!  A record for me this year.

Actually, I've enjoyed the break.  I was shooting in Vegas for one night a couple of days ago and I did finally return to the felt in an 11pm donkament at the Monte Carlo.  I love the room, but I was basically lighting $60 on fire.  A preposterous structure where a real poker player with 10 bigs finds himself jamming with A3 UTG an hour and 20 minutes after the start time.   The rest of the table shakes their heads and clucks their tongues when this real player runs into queens which hold. No worries.  Good times.

Looks like I won't get too much more time on the felt before my WSOP Vegas trip on the 28th, but that's okay.  I'm looking forward to the tournament this Saturday night and hopefully I can avoid spazzing out like I did last time - snap calling for most of my chips with only an open ended straight draw.  Yuck.

Recently all 3 of my horses and a good friend busted out of their events in the WSOP - I got mini trip reports from them and you can read 3 out of 4 (Nick B. was staked from Flatline, my online league) below.

All the reports I got back were pretty full of disappointment.  Yes, the first timers were also grateful and excited for the experience - but overall they felt more than a twinge of sadness at having not cashed or done better.

This minor melancholy is inevitable for us recreational players I suppose, but I got a good dose of perspective last night watching the World Series of Poker online.

For those who don't know, the WSOP is streaming live every single final table in all 62 events this year at www.wsop.com.  It's pretty awesome.  I enjoy the young kid who commentates and his wide variety of guests (including big names like Hellmuth and the like).

Last night it was Event #36, a $3000 shoot-out event.   The chip leader was Antonio Esfandiari, a one time bracelet winner and multi-WPT event winning semi-poker celebrity.  He has occasional flashes of douche-ness, but overall is pretty likable and is certainly a formidable player.

He for 5 hours he put on a clinic on how to use a monster stack with very little risk to dominate a table and accumulate chips.  It was pretty inspiring.

He got very lucky against the other big stack at the table and busted him by flopping the top end of a straight when his opponent had flopped the bottom end. Then it was 3 handed and Antonio cranked up the aggression even more.

His two opponents, professionals but clearly outclassed, did their best to hang on in a battle for second place.

Then, it was unclear from the webcast exactly how it happened, there was some discussion of a deal between them to split second and third place money, effectively removing the pay jump pressure that Antonio had been so expertly exploiting.

Antonio objected to the "deal" (this sort of thing isn't a chop or a deal, it's basically collusion if you exclude another player) and the WSOP stepped in and put a stop to it.   You won't read any of this at www.wsop.com, it's conveniently expurgated, but as it turns out it didn't really affect the outcome after all.

Antonio had 80% of the chips and a few hands later he got all his money in as an 80% favorite, snap calling off with pocket nines - he was up against sevens.

Bam.

A seven on the flop and that was that.  Antonio was hurt badly.  1.5 million in chips, over half of his stack, slid over to the sucker outer.

A hand or two later, Antonio got it in with AJ suited, a monster in 3 handed play, and found himself against the other short stack who had open shoved for the umpteenth time, and this time happened to have AK which held.  A genuine cooler for Antonio.

Now crippled, Antonio made a stand with Q10 and ran into K10.  He was out in third place.

He did nothing wrong, he played perfect poker for almost 6 hours - including the hands he went out on.

He's a hell of a cash game player who has been crushing the mid-upper stakes live levels for years, and he has millions in tournament winnings.

He had 80% of the chips, outclassed his opponents by a mile and got his money in as an 80% favorite on the most crucial hand of the tournament.

Poker smacked him upside the head hella hard and he didn't even flinch.  It had to hurt, it had to sting, but Antonio was stoic and classy till the end.

Very impressive.

The announcer made a great observation - I'm paraphrasing - "To Antonio the money is meaningless, but I know he wanted that bracelet so badly.  Still, he's a professional in every sense of the word, Antonio has had a million of these bad beats and he'll have a million more."  True dat.

So I say to all my friends, the horses, Babs, Allen and Nick, and to my poker buddy Dog who took a shot in the largest single starting day tournament in history - it is unlikely you didn't make mistakes.  But even if you were perfect, as Antonio was, and even if you were an 80% favorite (in chips or in odds) - you could still have gotten fucked.   Hard.

Thems teh pokerz.

I'm very much looking forward to my WSOP odyssey next week - I plan to play two or maybe three Rio Deepstack events.  The 2pm events have been averaging over 1000 runners with first place prizes of 50K or more - an incredible value for a $240 investment.   I was going to try to satellite into a bracelet tournament, but I think I want to concentrate on going deep in one of the DS events.

If the poker Gods are favorable and I cash and if the spirit moves me I can still put some of my winnings towards a seat in the Sunday 1K bracelet event.

Otherwise it's looking like this -

Thursday - $130 Noon event at the Nugget.

Friday and Saturday - 2pm Deepstack at the Rio.

Sunday - $150 Nooner at Binion's.

Monday - If I haven't cashed - a smaller daily like Aria or Mirage.  If I have cashed then probably the Wynn Classic or maybe the Venetian DSE.

Can't wait!

Dog days @ the 2012 WSOP

by Dog D. -

Y'all got Barbara's story a few days ago. This is mine. Enjoy.

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June 18, 2012

Heading to Vegas for the World Series Of Poker, I was feeling good. Earlier in the year, I had won nearly a thousand bucks at tournament at Hollywood Park, and just last week I played a few hours at Hustler and walked away with over $250. According to my records, my poker bankroll was up to $1824.

I returned to L.A. yesterday $393 in the hole.

So how did I manage to lose $2217 playing poker for 4 days? Turns out, it wasn’t hard at all.

THE SENIORS’ EVENT

Having just turned 50, I wanted for once in my life to be the youngest guy at the table, so I entered the $1000 Seniors’ Event. I lasted 30 minutes. On the forth hand, I lost 90% of my chip stack when my flopped a set of 6s fell to a flopped a set of queens. Ouch.

Still, I enjoyed the quirkiness of the seniors’ event. There were over 4100 players, setting the record for the largest poker tournament with a single start date.

At the beginning of the event, the WSOP trotted out an 85-year-old Hall of Famer named Oklahoma Johnny Hale. Despite this being an international event, he insisted we begin by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. He almost got the words right. Then he read the names of recently deceased poker players and started to cry. It was touching.

The tournament ended this afternoon with Dennis Phillips (who finished 3^rd in the Main Event 3 years ago) coming in 2^nd, and old pro Hoyt Corkins finishing 4^th. The winner was a woman named Allyn Jaffrey Shulman, whose husband Barry and stepson Jeff own CardPlayer Magazine and have each won WSOP bracelets. She won over $600,000, though I think the real winner of the seniors’ event was whoever was renting all the power scooters.

THE AFTERNOON DEEPSTACKS

Every afternoon for 3 days straight, I entered the $235 2pm Daily Deepstack.

Last year, I played this event against a field of 800 and finished 85^th. Sadly, only 83 cashed. Soooo close.

This year, the fields were enormous. Nearly 1300 on Thursday, 1380 on Friday, and 1450 on Saturday. First place for each day was listed around $49,000, $52,000, and $54,000 respectively.

I never came close, lasting a mere 4 hours on my best day. My failure was a combination of being card-dead, sitting to the right of the most aggressive players, and making several mistakes. Lost $705 in the process.

Still I love these tournaments. At one point, I sat next to Harold Angle, an 80-year-old who won the Seniors’ Event in 2010. Nice man. Wore his gold bracelet. Confused his $1000 chips with $100 chips.

CASH GAMES

After getting my ass kicked in tournaments, I decided to switch to cash games. Historically, I’ve won much more money playing cash games than playing in tournaments. I lost $112 at the Palms, $120 at the Rio’s main room, and $280 at the WSOP’s cash tables.

THE VEGAS EXPERIENCE

Outside of the WSOP, I did have a few fun times. Hung out with Pepper Street regular Nick Bognar one night and had breakfast Allen Ruby one morning. I spent an evening at Frankie’s Tiki Room, where I collected a few souvenir tiki glasses and partied with 3 burly, tattooed rockabilly chicks from Albuquerque. (Two were nurses, one a paramedic.) I spent some time at the Pinball Hall of Fame, and went downtown to see a stage version of Trey Parker’s “Cannibal: The Musical.”  I also decided that the Gold Coast was a bland but decent place to stay, priced a third cheaper than the Rio next door.

Foodwise, I ate mostly buffets though I did try the fried chicken at Flavor Flav’s House of Flavor. Pretty gross. His dipping sauces include flavors like Strawberry Daiquiri and Margarita.

I wanted to try a steakhouse I had heard about, but after a couple days of poker, I just walked around muttering to myself, “You play so bad, you don’t deserve no fuckin’ steak.” And I didn’t.

SO NOW WHAT?

I plan to lick my wounds, rebuild my bankroll, and go back next year. I’ll probably skip the bracelet events until I cash at a deepstack, and maybe stay at a play with a nicer pool. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll play good enough to justify that steak.

2012 WSOP Adventures with Babs (and Allen R.!)

Barbara N. recently represented PSP in the WSOP!  Here is her all too brief synopsis -

"Wow.  What an insane, amazing, nerve-wracking, thrilling, exhausting, and overall incredible experience I had.  I got home yesterday afternoon, and I'm still reeling.

I tried to text Chris a few times during my event, but honestly, it was difficult to do as I was having to keep a sharp focus on the table, the hands, the playing styles of a steady stream of new players being rotated in, etc.  


Here's my update, info, and insights, in no particular order:


First of all, thanks to Eric for sending me a pic of the poker room.  I would've probably thrown up from nervousness had I not been prepared for a convention floor full of poker tables!  

We sat down at noon on Sunday and started in.  I tried not to be intimidated and kept telling myself it was no different than Chris's garage.  Lots (and I mean lots! -- stats to follow) of people fell out quick.  I won a fair amount of hands that I played -- and I think you guys would be proud of me (?) -- I bluffed on more than a few hands (in position, too, I might add), and it worked.  I loved it.  

Sadly, I dwindled down to about 10 big blinds, so I decided to go all in with pocket Js pre-flop.  This creepy Japanese guy called me with 7-10 o/s (who plays those cards?!?).  The flop was 7-7-9.  Turn card was nothing of note, and the river was another 7 -- so he got me on quad 7s.  Let me tell you, walking out of there after 6 hours of playing, I felt like a boxer who'd gone 10 rounds with Muhammad Ali.  I was totally drained.

There were almost 2900 people registered for the event.  I found out later from a guy I met who got knocked about the same time I did that we made it to around 650.  He said it was one of the quickest drops of players he'd ever seen. During my time at the table, we must have gone through a minimum of 15 players.  When I got knocked out, I was one of three of the original players from our starting table.  Day 1 ended with 222 players left... none of them from my original table (which I felt slightly good about ;)

I played in a $75 turbo round Monday morning, lasted only an hour, getting kicked out on -- get this -- pocket Js!  How headshy am I of those cards now?  Ugh.  And later, I lost about $150 at a cash table.  I was feeling pretty dejected at this point.  I had $200 left of the money I had ear-marked to play with, so I sat down at a blackjack table.  An hour later I got up..... with $900.  Thank you, Vegas gods.

So, that's my story.  I can't thank you all enough for your support, encouragement, teachings, and patience.  I fear you have made a poker monster out of me -- I'm already planning to go next year, even if I have to fund an event myself.  Seriously, I think I'm kind of hooked ;)

That said, I'll see ya'll in a couple weeks (unless anyone wants to go down to The Bike one day -- I got $700 in blackjack winnings to lay down at the poker table!).  And good luck, Allen.  Let's hope you represent Pepper St. Poker better than I did ;) "

So the lesson is, forget poker - play the pit games!  :)

Barbara, you have nothing to hang your head about!  You represented us in the very best way, in the spirit of what our game is all about.  A bit of competitiveness, a dash of wonder and a whole heap of kindness topped off with even amounts of self assurance and humility.   We could not be prouder of you Babs!

I should also mention that on June 15 Dog took a shot on his own in his first WSOP Seniors event, which also happened to be the largest single starting day live tournament in poker history, with over 4000 players.  Sadly, he was coolered with a set over set.  All the same I would love to hear a full report from him and post it here! (hint, hint!)

Tomorrow - Allen R. takes his shot!  Stay tuned for hopefully another report!


UPDATE: Allen R. is out!  Coolered!


"Hi everyone Friday night played some cash game nothing crazy. Saturday came the deep stack which was a great value at $235 for 50k and I ran pretty well outlasted 1200 but fell short of the money. The big day came I was feeling good play began a little rough made some adjustments and was doing fine. Then shortly after the 2nd level began I was dealt 55 in the cutoff I raised the bb called I flopped a set and before I knew it was all in only to see bb turn over top set of 9s... Still having a good time regardless thanks everyone see y'all around pepper street!"


Thanks for keeping it real homie!  See you on the 23rd!