FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#113 – Fool’s Paradise, Part II – WPT Championship, Watching and Waiting

Posted by Editor | Filed under Bellagio, Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide - Tournament Edition, Gavin Smith, massage, WPT

I will write up my adventures with Ted Forrest and at Jennifer Harman’s charity poker tournament ASAP. I’m in my room at the Bellagio – thanks to the help of Doug Dalton and his assistant Karen in getting me a great rate (the poker rate) on a busy, busy weekend – after watching the beginning of the WPT Championship. I’m also waiting to play an Iron Man heads-up match against rockyruu. He gets $5,000 if he wins, and a chance for more against Perry Friedman and Andy Bloch.

$5,000? I think if Jo Anne divorced me, she’d have trouble getting that much. The pressure in on me here, really.

I joined Katie Lindsay, the hardest working writer in poker, to scope out the start of the WPT Championship. She’s writing numerous articles this weekend and was trying to get quotes from a number of players about playing pocket aces. I told her a number of things I had learned from Andy Bloch, until she said, “Oh, there’s Mike Sexton, and took off.” Come to think of it, she never actually ASKED my opinion.

But she did succeed in getting me to bet on the number of players in the WPT Championship. Normally, this would be a fool’s errand; she has killed me in every quasi-betting proposition we have ever made. They have split the field into two days so we won’t know until sometime tomorrow the number of players. Because I’m leaving in the morning, she suggested, “You could just pay me now and get it over with.”

Not this time, my young friend. I think I hustled her on this one, and I’m going to milk it for all I can. We started by jockeying for over/under numbers. I “inadvertently” threw out 500. When she gave the number as 625, I immediately said “over!”

“Wait a minute, you were talking about 500 just a minute ago.” Yeah, Katie, and sometimes gamblers lie to each other.

We settled on the following: the over/under is whatever number of players entered last year’s WPT Championship. She gets under that amount, I get over.

That $20 is as good as mine.

I hadn’t talked to Gavin Smith since I sent him an advance copy of the Full Tilt book, to which he contributed the Big-Stack chapter. We shook hands as he walked into the room. “You are a magician,” he said. I think he liked how it came out. He predicted that it will be this generation’s Super/System.

Huck Seed and Jason from Full Tilt were talking in the hall just before 12. Huck was deciding whether to play today or tomorrow. “I played until 2 this morning. I feel really good, but I don’t know after 4 or 5 hours.” I think he decided to play tomorrow.

I watched the beginning from the Fontana Lounge, where they had 24 tables. I didn’t get to see the main poker room – I will later – but I heard they had around 16 tables for the tournament there, but that was an estimate and an unofficial number.

From my seat along the edge of the Fontana, I was next to Jon Hennigan’s table, where he sat at seat 8. He bid on and won a snowboard at the live auction at Jennifer’s tournament yesterday. I don’t recognize any of the other players at his table, which means little, other than that he DOESN’T have any of the people I DO recognize at his table.)

Nine minutes in, he gets up to take a walk. His chips look untouched, and he has a pen setting behind them. He returns with a coffee a few minutes later. In the meantime, seat 3 was motioning to his back and has started getting a massage. I think this tournament is supposed to go eight days. If this guy can’t make it 15 minutes without needing a massage, I don’t like his chances.

More of my impressions later, plus the story of my heads-up match, and all the other adventures I owe you.

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