July 05, 2005
I play on Friday...
I'm in Vegas now! I picked up my entry and I'm scheduled to play on Friday for day 1(b) of the final event! 2200 players will start each day Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and the fields will be reduced to about 700 players each day. So day 2 for me will be on Sunday if I can survive!
Posted by LarryW at 04:37 PM | Comments (2)
July 06, 2005
stars in my eyes....
I've now been in Las Vegas for 24 hours and have had more action than I can remember -- and I haven't gambled a single dollar yet!
Last night I was fortunate to be included in an invitation-only celebrity/poker pro party thrown by Full Tilt Poker and Bluff Magazine (I ranked an invite because I helped connect Rhythm & Hues and Fult Tilt to create the graphics for the poker site -- thanks Stacey Burstin!)...
The party took over the dance club at the new Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas. This is the most expensive hotel ever built in Las Vegas, and the dance club has the class to match. Poker tables, with dealers, were set up in the middle of the party scene so people could sit down and play small free one-table poker tournaments with other guests -- guests which included many famous poker players and hollywood celebrities. In addition to 15 or 20 famous Poker players, Penn (from Penn and Teller), David Brenner, Jennifer Tilly, Rob Livingston (Office Space and Sex and The City (Berger)), Andrea Parker (The Pretender), and other Hollywood actors and producers were there. Whoever won a tournament could donate $1000 to the charity of their choice ( the boys and girls club of Las Vegas being the default).
I played two tournaments and won one. In the second tourney I sat next to Rob Livingston and chatted with him for a while. A very nice guy -- and I told him he should be very proud of the work he did as the main character in "Office Space" (one of my favorite movies). I'm sure he really didn't care what I thought, but he was gracious and nice anyway. A good guy. Andrea Parker was also very nice. It was a thrill to meet them both, and a bigger thrill to knock them off the poker tables with better cards than theirs :)
My sister was there with me. I don't think she's ever been around anything like this before. She got a great thrill in knocking Layne Flack out of a tournament!
Among the poker pros in attendence were Paul Wolf, Phil Gordon, Phil Ivey, Eric Seidel, Andy Bloch, Howard Ledderer, Clonie Gowen, Chris Ferguson, Mel Judah, and many more.
And the drinks were on the house too. It was hard to complain.
Posted by LarryW at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)
I could be f'd....
It look like this year they have put in place a no cursing rule at the tables. I've never seen that done in Poker before. This could be a big problem for me! If you are overheard using the f-word in any capacity you are given a 10 minute timeout and your chips are blinded-off while you are forced to sit out and wait...
In one of the major events a few days ago, the tournament got down to only two players remaining. They were playing for 1/2 million dollars. The player with 4 times as many chips as the other accidentally said the word, and they forced him to sit out and watch while the other player collected the blinds as each hand was dealt for 10 minutes. Amazingly, the player was able to return with enough chips left to still win the tournament.
I'm from New York you know. As David Weinberg has said, the New York alphabet goes F-in A, F-in B, F-in C, ....
Dang!
Posted by LarryW at 04:41 PM | Comments (6)
July 08, 2005
On my way...
I'm heading down to play! I just learned that the guy leading day 1, Lee Watkinson, was the guy I wound up heads-up against at the party the other night. I wound up beating him when we had even chip counts and won the one table just-for-charity tourney. Close encounters.
Claudia came up with a good name for me too. The Turtle!
Posted by LarryW at 10:13 AM | Comments (2)
Still alive
730 pm still alive with $10,000 after 4 rounds. Will need some luck soon!
Posted by LarryW at 07:34 PM | Comments (4)
July 09, 2005
Oh well....
Well, it was fun anyway! Yes, I was eliminated late in the 7th round. I made it 14 hours in (1:45 AM). The blinds and antes were getting serious enough that I needed to pick a spot and make a move to get some chips or I would soon be too low. I was losing $1250 every 10 hands just by the blinds -- and playing a hand meant putting in up to $3000 before the flop (therefore a $3000 to $6000 bet after the flop). I had about $10,000 left. I had to make a stand with A-Q when the flop came up Queen high. I bet $6000 and the guy next to me put me all in. Unfortunately I ran into pocket Aces and a queen didn't come.
The day started with almost 2000 people, and I made it down to about 700.
My most exciting moment came earlier when I doubled up to $20,000 while knocking out another player. He had less money than I at the time, so I wasn't facing elimination, but if I had lost I would have been very low. I had AK and the flop had come A Q 7. We went back and forth raising until all his money was in -- I thought he was just trying to push me out at first and assumed my AK was good. He wound up having AQ, so I looked dead once I saw that. But the K came up on the turn card and I had better two pair. He was shocked and sulked away.
In the end, I think I played pretty well -- had confidence most of the time -- and never said the F-Bomb to get a timeout. Of course I'd like to blame the cards for my loss. I watched a guy next to me get pocket Aces four times while I got only one high pair, and one flopped set (3 of a kind) dealt to me in 14 hours of play.
I'll elaborate more later once I get some coffee and my spirits back.
Thanks to all who wanted to follow along this year!
Posted by LarryW at 11:30 AM | Comments (4)
July 10, 2005
In good company
To help myself feel better, I looked up some of the famous poker pros who were also elminated on Day 1 along with me. It's quite a list. When the cards don't come, even the best of them get eliminated.
All of these players are out on day 1:
Johnny Chan
Chris Ferguson
Danny Negreanu
Chris Bigler
Erik Seidel
Josh Arieh
Scott Fischman
Humberto Brenes
Clonie Gowen
Devil Fish Ulliott
Mike Caro
Eskimo Clark
Barry Greenstein
Jennifer Tilly
Mike Laing
Jennifer Harmon
Phil Hellmuth
Mimi Rogers
Phil Gordon
Cyndy Violette
Dewey Tomko
Evelyn Ng
Men "The Master" Nguyen
Antonio Esfandiari
Kathy Liebert
Tobey Maguire
John Bonetti
Tony Ma
Thor Hansen
John D'Agostino
Tom McEvoy
Jim Brechtel
James Woods
Mel Judah
Andy Block
Chip Jett
TJ Cloutier
and others....
Posted by LarryW at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)
Further analysis (more whining)
I still need to do some whining (not winning, whining).
When you analyze a little, you can see just how poor the cards ran for me over 14 hours of play. If you consider that in 14 hours of slow playing one should see 400 to 500 hands (30 hands per hour), then statistically I should have, on average, been dealt a high pair (aces, kings, or queens) 6 or 7 times instead of once. That one time was a pair of Kings in early position which were folded to when I made the standard raise of 3 times the big blind. So I collected only the antes with it.
I was also never dealt a hand of suited connectors (something like Jack-Ten suited) in a position I could play. I did get AQ a couple of times (which resulted in me getting busted) and AK about 3 times.
I made some bold moves, stole some pots, and did what I could with the cards I was dealt -- reaching almost $25,000 at one point in the tournament.
As for fault in my play, I will admit that I probably got pushed out of a couple of pots by one aggressive guy who may have been taking advantage of my tight play to force me to make all-in decisions before I really wanted to. But should I have put in 2/3 or all of my money in with a pair of threes after the flop or AQ before the flop to see if he was bluffing? I decided not to. So he got 5 or 6 thousand out of my bet-before-the-flop attempts.
If there is a lesson I did learn, though, it's that in a tournament like this you absolutely cannot try to hold on and survive. You have to be aggressive and push on the windows of opportunity from the beginning. This was my first time in this event, and I really did want to hold on -- so I was holding back a little. Next time, I won't be afraid to be eliminated in the first hour if that's what it will take.
Posted by LarryW at 09:16 PM | Comments (1)
How the F-Bomb played out at my tables
In general, the dealers tended to ignore when someone said the F-bomb -- especially when uttered by accident in a friendly manner.
But there was one situation at my table which did result in a player receiving the 10 minute suspension. It was kind of funny. A player started to throw his hand away before realizing that he actually had flopped a set (3 of a kind). He had let go of his cards, and they just touched the discard pile (the muck). Once the cards touch the muck, the hand is dead. The dealer told him so, and the player, as one would expect, proudly annouced the f-word. Then he dropped his head to the table as he realized what he had just said in front of this strict dealer. He was gone for 10 after that.
Posted by LarryW at 09:46 PM | Comments (0)
Being on TV
As for being on TV, there is a chance, depending on how depressed I looked when I got eliminated, that I could show up in an edit of the event on ESPN. The camera crew tried to film any situation which resulted in an all-in player. I did notice that they were, in fact, filming me as I dejectedly got up from my table and grabbed my coat off the back of the chair and slunked away. The agony of defeat.
Posted by LarryW at 09:50 PM | Comments (2)