2
#066 – Heads-Up Championship Part III – PURE Boys
”Pure boys!”
For some reason, I remember that line from a high school play. I think it was MUSIC MAN, when the townspeople were expressing their concern about a new pool hall in town.
The pairings party for the heads-up championship was at PURE, the ultra cool nightclub at Caesars Palace, and it was a very nice event.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, media credentials came pouring in. Katie Lindsay put me on the right track. Eric Drache and Pierre Moossa moved heaven and earth. Scott Houston proved helpful and understanding. I was in.
Inside it was dark and noisy. If the sensory overload of PURE wasn’t already enough, there were friends of mine everywhere, most of whom, being poker friends, I hadn’t seen since poker last brought us together.
The first familiar face I saw was Erik Seidel. Erik is very friendly toward me but he has such a dry sense of humor that I couldn’t tell you 100% for sure whether he really likes me or if his sense of humor is a shield to keep me at bay.
Because I see Erik EVERYWHERE I go in poker – for instance, I tapped him on the back as he was walking through a Scottsdale restaurant a few weeks ago; in September, I waved to him at a reception attended by Jimmy Carter – I always say hello by telling him that I’m trailing him. “Everywhere you are Erik, that’s where I’m going to be.”
He laughed and said something about investigating whether I’m actually triplets.
After adjusting to the darkness inside, I saw Marco Traniello and Jennifer Harman, so I said hello and wished them both good luck and congratulations – both on the heads-up championship and on their twin baby boys.
Jennifer looked great, by the way. Because of her fluctuating state of health and the medications she needs to take, that’s not always the case, and I was pleased to see her looking really good. More important, she told me was was feeling good too.
So how much live poker are you playing these days?
“I’ve played about three times this year.”
Jen’s not sure what she’s going to do in the future – maybe play more, maybe play less, maybe play online, maybe move to Reno, maybe play in Larry Flynt’s game more.
Last year was a tough poker year for her, other than the piece of the win for the pros against Andy Beal. “Maybe I should send him an e-mail,” she suggested.
“Tell him you named one of the boys after him.”
The last time I communicated with Andy Beal, which was very recently, he was still retired from poker. But who knows?
While I was scribbling notes, Todd Brunson and a friend sat down next to me. We exchanged hellos and I went back to writing. About 10 minutes later, I finished my notes and got up to say hello to Andy Bloch, who just walked by.
“Nice talking to you,” Todd said as I brushed past, nodding and smiling, before stepping on Humberto Brenes’s foot.
The pairings themselves went quickly. Ali Nejad and Shanna Hiatt kept it moving along, in contrast to the last two years, when each pairing was delayed by one of the hosts insisting that some local celebrity, casino executive, or weathergirl in Akron be introduced for the difficult task of picking the first name for each pairing. After that, the first player who then be asked, “Who do you want to see as your opponent?” before they picked the second name.
It took only an hour to make the picks, less than half the time of the past two years. Everyone hung around to bet on the matches.
Most interesting first-round pairings:
Joe Hachem vs. Chris Moneymaker
Gus Hansen vs. Shawn Sheikhan
Ted Forrest vs. Sam Farha (their match last year was the longest in the short history of the event)
Mike Matusow vs. Daniel Negreanu (I’ll be watching that one close-up. I talked to Daniel briefly afterword and he told me, “There’s gonna be a lot of trash-talking in that one.” Gee, ya think?)
Milling around after, I ran into Roxanna Kaveh, Ted Forrest’s business partner and girlfriend. Roxanna is one of my favorite people in poker, and she happened to be looking especially alluring tonight. She told me she had an idea about organizing a fundraiser for Barrack Obama in Las Vegas and she wanted the invite to come from Phil Ivey. We discussed the merits of the idea, and I included Andy Bloch in the discussion, because Andy is one of the most politically active pros. We talked about how much the fundraiser might raise. Andy said he would probably give the max, which he thought was $2,500. To keep up, I said I’d sign on for the max as well.
Later, when I saw Ted, I told him Roxanna had roped me into this fundraiser. “I’m not even playing and I’m already stuck twenty-five hundred. Could you back me for some of it?”
Ted put his hands up, “If I do any backing, the guy will lose for sure.”
