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“I Flew All the Way to Australia to Play at this Table?”
The $10,000 buy-in Main Event of the Aussie Millions just got underway, and the powers that be took an interesting approach to the kickoff. They actually had a short opening ceremony. It was what you might expect form an Olympic opening ceremony if the Olympics had 500 or so competitors and half as many observers.
Everyone’s attention was draw to a raised platform (an area that normally serves as a bar/grill) where a trio started into a competent and energized version of INXS’s New Sensation (they’re Australian, you know).
Gus Hansen, last year’s champion, and Joe Hachem (he’s Australian, you know) then addressed the crowd. Play got underway moments later.
I’ve covered enough tournaments to know that you can count on two things to happen within the 30 seconds of the directive to “Shuffle Up and Deal.” 1) Gavin Smith will raise. 2) Some group of players will find themselves horrified with they’re table draw. Today was the first time I saw these things happening simultaneously.
Gavin found himself sitting directly between John Juanda and David Grey. Gavin, who raises the first hand of every tournament, popped it to 5x the small blind form under the gun. John called from the big blind, then folded to a bet on a King-high flop. Gavin showed the table his pocket Aces. I guess once in every 220 or so tournaments Gavin will actually be raising the first hand with Aces.
As I walked the floor, Lee Watkinson, who won a PLO event last week, stopped me and offered up the quote in the title of this post. Lee had reason to complain. His table included Paul Sexton, last year’s runner up Jimmy Fricke, and Allen Cunningham. Lee stopped Matt Savage, the tournament director, as he walked by and asked for a table breakdown schedule. Savage gave only bad news. The table would be together for most of the day.
And this note is apropos of nothing, but I just learned that the Full Tilt schwag bag includes a replica of the cowboy hat Andy Bloch wears. I wasn’t consulted on this matter, and I don’t think it’s a good choice.
