FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#124 – Between the End of the Bellagio and the Beginning of Ted Forrest’s Mercedes, Part II

Posted by Editor | Filed under Bellagio, Chris Ferguson, Jennifer Harman, John Hennigan, Phil Ivey, Richard Brodie, Roland de Wolfe, WPT Championship

The Tiger and the Iceman

Leaving the Bellagio on Monday, April 9, I stopped for breakfast in the hotel. I always feel awkward eating alone and usually bring something to read. But my car was packed to the gills and I walked in empty handed. Luckily, I found a copy of M Magazine, “the lifestyle magazine of MGM Mirage.” There was a Q & A with Tiger Woods about his TigerJam charity event, scheduled this year for May 26 at Mandalay Bay.

“Q: TigerJam also boasts an amazing auction and last year you paid $50,000 for a private poker lesson with Phil Ivey.

A: Phil is great. He was so gracious to be a part of our auction, and while I have not yet hooked up with him for my lesson, I am really looking forward to it.”

Hmmm. I think if Tiger Woods tells Phil Ivey he is interested in learning how to play poker, Ivey might PAY HIM $50,000 to sit down with Tiger across the felt. Tiger, according to the article, has made $66 million in PGA prize money and earns $80 million a year from endorsements and appearance fees. For somebody with his net worth, $50,000 is probably as cheap as you can get off spending time at the poker table with Phil Ivey.

Prisoners of the Fontana Bar

I returned to Las Vegas to shop for cars with Ted Forrest (an adventure still to be written – sorry), play in Jennifer Harman’s charity poker tournament for the Nevada SPCA (which I have written about, see posts ## 115-118), and watch the beginning of the WPT Championship. Last year, I was outside the Fontana Bar at the beginning of Day 1-A with Chris Ferguson. Chris had believed there was headway in negotiations to alter the release that players were required to sign. (The matter is in litigation and, because several of the plaintiffs are my friends and Full Tilt pros, you may be inclined to discount my general view that the WPT is overreaching. So I’ll spare you the explanation, unless the situation arises to explain it in such detail that I can convince you of that my views are based on the merits, not my friendships or my wallet.)

In short, Ferguson and several others contended the release put the players in the position of signing away intellectual property rights they believed (a) weren’t essential to agreeing to appear on TV and promote the WPT’s broadcasts; (b) didn’t belong to the players, having already been contracted to competing online poker sites, video game makers, etc.; and/or (c) could be valuably sold if they weren’t already sold and the WPT release required the players to give them away.

Chris had been led to believe there was some movement in the WPT’s position of refusing to negotiate the terms of the release. That turned out not to be the case and he and Steve Lipscomb were supposed to talk about it outside the Fontana Bar as the event started. Lipscomb turned hostile when Chris said he saw no reason why I couldn’t hear what the two of them had to say.

If Lipscomb was in attendance this year, I didn’t see him.

It was very tense inside the Fontana Bar, where most of the players on Day 1-A were playing. (There were several tables in the Bellagio’s main poker room devoted to the tournament, though they broke first.) The WPT Championship is such a weird event. It is not as anticipated as the Main Event of the World Series, but it’s still huge and you get so many chips to start that it has almost nothing in common with every other tournament. The room was relaxed, but that was because everyone expected to be here for a long, long time. Still, because you could get sucked into a big pot in a hurry, it could all go wrong at once, so the tension wasn’t far beneath the surface.

I noticed John Hennigan’s table near where I camped out taking notes. He got up after a few minutes and came back with some coffee. I left to play in the Iron Man Heads-Up (where I was the only winning pro, thank you very much – actually, I’m thanking “the deck” because I got great cards) and, when I came back, Johnny World had been eliminated.

But eliminations were slow. After five hours, only 25 of 306 starters had been eliminated. One of the things I noticed about this tournament venue is that it is one of the few places in tournament poker that receives natural sunlight. In fact, it was so bright that the room darkened significantly when the Bellagio fountain show started.

One of the high points of the afternoon for me was meeting Roland de Wolfe for the first time. Somebody must have said nice things about me at the Aussie Millions – I blame Richard Brodie but I really don’t know – because he “stopped by” my table during an online tournament back in January, said hello, and told me how much he liked SUICIDE KING. He had his back to me in the Fontana Bar and noticed me before I noticed him. He got up between hands, introduced himself, and again told me how much he liked the book.

“I find Andy Beal such a fascinating person. You did a great job introducing him to readers.” As he’s telling me this, I’m thinking, GO BACK TO YOUR GAME! They are dealing the cards! “It was because of your book that I decided to get into banking.”

Roland is WAY too clever for me. Between wondering how he could chat away when his cards were being picked up as dead and being flattered by both his compliments and the fact he recognized me before I recognized him, I didn’t even notice he was joking.

“Er, you’re in the banking business now?”

He soon went back to the game, where he immediately got everyone to fold on the river to take a pot so big that I counted about six different colored chips and it took several hands to stack. I doubt he thought about me again, but if he did, he had wonder what the hell was so impressed about. Had I not felt like such a dope as a result of the conversation, I might have come back several days later to watch and root de Wolfe on, when he found himself deep in the money. He finished 26th, well short of the championship (and his third place finish last year) and the $4 million, but in the situation everyone WANTED to be in: spending days on end in the Gulag Fontana Bar, taking a shot at the crown.

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