I was making a good run in the $750,000 Guarantee on Sunday when I got stuck in an awful situation. We were about 250 or so from the money (3+ hours into the tourney), the average stack was about 12,000, and I had over 14,000. Blinds were 200-400, antes were 50. I was very pleased with how I was playing.
Then the roller coaster started.
David Chiu waited patiently while his competitors raced to cripple and then bust each other, setting up an anticipated showdown with Gus Hansen. Overcoming a 5-to-1 chip advantage by Hansen, David took down the championship with smart heads-up play and some very timely luck.
It was a day of congratulations all around:
I hope you’ve noticed that the schedule for FTOPS VIII is coming together. The events run May 7-May 18. I was especially pleased that Full Tilt listened to my lobbying (a/k/a incessant whining, hectoring, and complaining) and included the first ever Turbo FTOPS event. It’s event #14, $200 + $16 NLHE-T, running on Tuesday, May 13, at 21:00 ET. (In a similar vein, they also listened to me and added another nightly turbo event, a $50 + $5 NLHE-T, though they chose to call it “Turbo Fiddy” instead of my suggested title, “Michael Craig’s Candyland.”)
Isn’t it great when you have a good idea and someone agrees – and then does something with it?
That is the genesis of my next contest, a fabulous giveaway to follow up “Michael Craig is Giving it Away,” the bonanza from FTOPS VII. Read on!
“Davenport. It’s a large sofa.”
I’m working in my office on Tuesday morning at the ungodly-early hour of 10:30 AM. Working at the other desk is my daughter Ellie. Ellie is taking an online class, working at Starbucks, and serving her sentence under house arrest with good humor. She was just breezing through an online English class and ran into the work “denotative.” She has this aversion to using the dictionary, which we’re also trying to work through.
“Desiccated. Dried out.”
No bad-beat story starts, “I had eight-five offsuit and ….” And you know there’s no happy ending when a news story starts, “The Los Angeles County Coroner confirmed ….”
I met Des Wilson, who was destined to become a dear friend, at the 2005 World Series of Poker. He attended a lunch during the Main Event with Anthony Holden (who I also had recently met and who was also destined to become a close friend) and Joe Saumarez Smith (a boyish Wharton grad who became one of the UK’s leading online gaming journalists and businessmen over the last decade).
I had not expected to write about the importance of understanding taxes and getting good tax advice today, just 4 days before 2007 income tax returns are due. On the one hand, this information would be more useful if you got it earlier. On the other hand, I’m just now starting to think about estimating my 2007 taxes for the purpose of getting an extension. So it’s either too early or too late, right?
Every so often, I get an e-mail from Colin, my friend in the Marines who was scheming to hook up Full Tilt for himself and his similarly-poker-crazed buddies. Unfortunately, it appears his efforts have been in vain. He told me that even the Full Tilt’s website – not the client, on which you actually play, but the site (which has rules, news, this blog, and of course the link to download the client) – was off limits.
The final table, according to Card Player’s web site, took 12 hours but heads-up play lasted only one hand. Erik Seidel, who began 3-handed play close in chips to Robert Richardson and Andrew Barta, became the most active player at the table, putting in small raises almost every hand. He took a substantial lead, yielded when challenged, and then crippled Barta when Andrew finally made a stand with A-Q. Erik had J-J and Barta was eliminated soon thereafter.
Even though I am 3000 miles from the action, I’ll feel like I’m part of the final table at the WPT Foxwoods Poker Classic when they finish the tournament on Wednesday. On Tuesday, Erik Seidel emerged as the chip leader at the final table, with Ted Forrest in second.
This could be a treat.
