This was the last set of matches on Day 2, and the eight players involved were looking to win to get themselves into the quarterfinals and the really big TV time andt he really big money. It was the second consecutive long day, starting much earlier than poker players are used to starting. There were just four matches going, instead of the eight matches we were used to watching in the earlier rounds. The comments I’m reprinting here concern two of those matches:

Phil Gordon v. Gavin Smith – 2 more good friends of mine, and the guys who wrote the short-stack and big-stack sections of the STRATEGY GUIDE.

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One of the initial heats – they ran eight matches at a time to get through the initial two rounds – featured a number of interesting matches and I noted the highlights of each, with the time, and posted it when the group of matches ended. A few of the matches, for particular reasons, seemed especially interesting. One was the match between Shannon Elizabeth and Jeff Madsen. It wasn’t generally known at the time but Madsen was one of the pros who helped with with Shannon on her heads-up play. Another match pitted Ted Forrest against Shawn Shiekhan – Ted’s second rematch from his 2006 championship run. Having enjoyed reading my old post about these matches, I decided to reprint some portions of it, in case you missed it the first time.

The cards were in the area at high noon, just 90 minutes after the stage call. They start with 40,000 apiece, and blinds of 200-400.

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The NBC Heads-Up Championship was my first attempt at covering an event for the blog. The tournament room behind Caesars’ regular poker room was converted into a TV stage and I set my computer up at the back of the bleachers and posted almost 20,000 words over several days. The event was star-studded, of course, and the series of matches made it much easier than at a traditional tournament to get close to the action and interact with the players.

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THE VALUE OF A KING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

Robert folds K-8 and gets K-5 on the following hand. “King-eight’s a better hand but king-five is close –“

Cate: “I HATE king-five.”

“All right,” Dallas says, “I was READY TO RAISE but the wife says, ‘I hate king-five.’ How can I raise when my wife says that?”

A couple hands later, Miss Lulu gets Ad-Kc under the gun. Miss Lulu limps.

Limps? This is a highly-advanced move, or at least an unorthodox move.

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MISS LULU’S RESTRAINT, CATE WILLIAMSON’S HEART ATTACK

As Dallas sings, “Let’s get this party started …” Miss Lulu is dealt Ah-Qh in the small blind.

It is folded around and Miss Lulu merely calls the big blind. MychCumstien in the big blind takes the bait, raising to 220,000. Miss Lulu comes over the top for everything.

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At 1 AM, with two tables remaining, Clonie, at the Williamson home at the other end of the Phoenix metropolitan area, and I are talking on the phone. I ask her to relay to Robert, who is in middle chip position in the Main Event, a request that I watch him play the final table from his house. Clonie tells me, “He says you better hurry over, because he’s making it.”

I carried a voice recorder with me and simply recorded what happened over the next hour. Over the following couple days, I typed it up, edited it, and included some description and commentary. I’m going to reprint it here pretty much as it originally appeared. I’ve edited out a few things but these are the things I found most interesting: (1) what a goofy time we had; (2) Robert’s names for almost all garbage hands, one of which (8-3, Octo-Crab) I use to this day; and (3) Robert Williamson III’s split personality at the (online?) poker table.

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Over the course of 2007, I would play almost every FTOPS event, and go in hock more than ten dimes doing so. I would also write about my experiences, the experiences of some other pros, some final tables, and even tabulate and explain the mostly disappointing experiences of the Full Tilt pros in these high-profile events. Back in February, when I first started the blog, Uncle Tilty told me he wanted me to cover the FTOPS as part of my blogging responsibilities.

I had no idea what he wanted, and soon discovered he, too, had no idea. I got extremely lucky in my maiden effort. Some pros went very deep in the early events and I wrote about that. I had some bizarre playing experiences, and wrote about that. Then Clonie Gowen surprised me by coming to Scottsdale and playing the Main Event in my study.

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I know it’s been awhile since I’ve been out on the tournament circuit. Since we discovered that Jo Anne had breast cancer – I was actually playing the Orleans Open championship when Jo Anne called to tell me the mammogram results were “suspicious” – I’ve been off circuit other than the previously-planned London trip for the WSOP-Europe and the Million Dollar Cash Game. I made two very short trips to Las Vegas, one on assignment for Uncle Tilty and one to attend Chip Reese’s funeral.

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Harrah’s decision to expand its concept of having “championships” for the different forms of poker played in WSOP events has attracted a fair amount of comment. Because I had written about the subject last week, David W., a friend of the blog and a player on Full Tilt, asked what’s probably an inevitable question: If these championship events are special, should they award a special bracelet?

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Harrah’s released its 2008 World Series of Poker schedule last week. I encourage you to look it over on their website, worldseriesofpoker.com. I generally liked last year’s schedule and this one, in many ways similar, looks good too. But they’ve given us plenty to ponder:

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