#089 - The Full Tilt Poker Guide to Maui, Part II - Aloha, Sucka!

I knew from the start that it would be an uphill battle convincing my many, many bosses that Full Tilt Poker, a primarily ONLINE poker site, should create the Wailea Open Poker Tournament on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Hell, if Disco Stu violates the terms of his probation and ends up back in jail, my chances of even getting my five-figure expenses reimbursed are shot.

But my secret weapon is Maui itself. It is, without a doubt, one of the nicest places in the world. No matter where you think the best place in the world is, Maui, at the very least, runs close. The quality of the resorts is as high as anyplace. The golf is world-famous. The beaches and water sports are superb. The food, both in variety and quality, is terrific. The spas are wonderful – okay, I’m going on the brochures at this point, but poker players get massages while they play, so how fancy do the spas have to be?

The best thing about Maui, compared with the best that Melbourne or Paris or London or Monte Carlo or Rome have to offer, is that it is right in the good ol’ U.S. of A. You have to fly a lot of miles to get here, but the ATMs shovel out American dinero. The cell phone reception is better than inside my house in Scottsdale. There are no Customs issues, no immigration delays on entering or leaving. (The only exception is if you are bringing fruits or vegetables in or out, in which case you deserve whatever happens to you.) They drive on the same side of the road. The TVs have all the familiar channels (which means there’s never anything good on TV).

Truly, it’s paradise on earth. What could be the downside?

Luckily for me, I play enough poker that I can find something to complain about in any situation. I found a couple problems.

The first problem with Maui is that there appears to be no indigenous gambling population. You’ll have to bring your own action. It’s possible that I’m simply not shrewd enough to have penetrated Maui’s gambling underground, but wandering around the Four Seasons bellowing, “Anyone wanna gamble?” wasn’t getting it done.

A second and potentially bigger problem with Maui is that it is very difficult to get anyone to do anything indoors. Despite the fact that it rained at some point every single day we were there, the pool and the beach were always packed. If it was nice, people flocked to the water. If it was raining, people flocked to the water because it was a chance to get a better spot on the beach or a better cabana by the pool. There were waiting lists at outdoor restaurants where they had to periodically clear the tables with a squeegee. Getting people like that to spend a dozen hours at a stretch hunched at a poker table could take years of re-education.

The biggest problem I found during my six days on Maui, ironically, involved ONLINE poker. Online poker ought to be the same everyplace, but if players can’t have a good online poker experience and you are, after all, an online poker site, that would be a major strike against holding a tournament.

The problem was not with the internet connection. My Verizon card worked fine and it looked like the hotel had the standard confiscatory-priced internet connection for ten or twelve bucks a night.

The problem is with tournament times. Because of the middle-of-nowhere Hawaii Time Zone, I felt like more of a loser than usual when playing my favorite tournaments. And when it seemed like the “right” time to play a tournament, all the other degenerate gamblers on the planet were sleeping, or at least doing something other than playing on Full Tilt.

For example, my usual downward spiral of a routine during the week is to play the following tournaments:

*$100 + $9 buy-in $30,000 Guarantee (6 handed)
*$20 + $2 buy-in $9,000 Guarantee with Rebuys
*$69 + $6 buy-in $13,000 Guarantee

This schedule is not set in stone. I tend to play pretty bad when I play more than one tournament at a time. There have been exceptions, and sometimes playing the early part of two tournaments at once keeps me from messing around with too many hands and getting myself in needless trouble. But on any given evening, I could be bounced out of these three fast enough that I’m looking at the $24 + $2 buy-in $18,000 Guarantee train-wreck, or some satellite.

The $30k goes off at 11 PM Eastern Time, the $9k Rebuy at 12:30 AM, and the $13k at 1:59 AM. Not having any job to speak of, I would probably these tournaments even if I lived on the East Coast, but living in Arizona, these tournaments started at 9 PM, 10:30 PM, and midnight. It’s the perfect schedule. I can have dinner with my family, spend time with my kids, and then we can leave each other the hell alone so we can actually enjoy ourselves for a little while.

When I returned from Maui and the rest of the world had gone on Daylight Savings Time, that itself required some adjusting. One of my kids almost choked on dinner while I was yelling to hurry up or daddy was going to miss the six-handed.

It was impossible to play those tournaments from Hawaii. The $30k started at 6 PM and the last of the three started at 9 PM. I pull a lot of shit on Jo Anne in the name of poker, but making her go to dinner by herself while we’re celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary – the celebration coincided with my business purpose in Hawaii – is crossing the line, even for me.

And that’s pretty much the end of the tournament action for the day. There’s the 3 AM (Eastern) $24 + $2 buy-in $4,000 Guarantee Pot Limit Hold ‘Em tournament, but I have to be beyond desperate to play that. (OK, since I’ve started keeping records last December, I’ve played that tournament 13 times. I’ve yet to make it to the first break. And yes, I did play it three times in Hawaii.)

In the final installment of The Full Tilt Poker Guide to Maui, I will describe some of the popular Maui activities, like the Road to Hana and biking down the volcano. Don’t worry about getting a lot of TravelGuide-ese. I’ll give you the gambler’s perspective on these activities.