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#460 – WSOP Notebook #33 – My Day 1-A Recap, Part II – Devilfish Goes to War
12:10 PM – Amazon Blue, 47-2. It was a mob scene getting in the room. The riser from which the opening festivities will start is right in front of me. There are a lot of TV/video cameras and microphones around.
12:17 PM – Jack Effel starts the opening announcements. 5 levels, 20-minute breaks, 90-minute dinner break after level 3, 2-hour levels. We’ll play until about 1 AM and the survivors will return on Tuesday for 2-A. Then Wayne Newton walks up the center aisle trailed by the ladies of Jubilee. Wayne gives a brief, enthusiastic speech about having fun and winning money in “my city … Las Vegas!” On cue, members of the UNLV Marching Band rush out, playing “Viva Las Vegas.” At 12:24, he says the magic words: “Shuffle up and deal.”
12:33 PM – I’m dealt A-A and raise the 50-100 blinds to 300. Remember how Allen Cunningham told me the other day that it didn’t matter when or where you started the Main Event because you’d start at a table filled with strangers no matter what? Well, Cunningham’s not right about everything. The player on the button calling my raise is David “Devilfish” Ulliott. (By the way, Seat 9 has just been filled by Maureen Feduniak.)
The flop is T-8-8. I bet 450 and Ulliott folds. He asks if I had J-J and says he had K-Q. Of course, I don’t say anything. Then he says he should have repopped me because he was in the lead before the flop. Again, I don’t respond to the obvious attempt to get me to give away information.
But as I write this down, I notice I’m actually shaking. Aces are scary this early.
The next three times I raise, Devilfish calls behind me. Twice he folds on the flop and once on the turn. One of the times, he shows 5-5. I assumed he was calling me with small pairs (at least some of the time) to try and hit a set. I don’t know why he bothered confirming that for me. Maybe he thought I would give him some clues about what I had but I’m not biting.
Des Wilson, who has written Swimming with the Devilfish and Ghosts at the Final Table (and who is playing on Friday and writing a blog for Ladbrokes website), comes by and says hello.
Ulliott asks me how I know Wilson. I mention that I helped him on a book and we’re friends, from an introduction from Tony Holden.
“Joanie Bowden?”
I swear that I clearly spoke Tony’s name and that David knows Tony. Why did he ask me if he wasn’t going to listen to my answer?
After I repeat the name a couple times and he acknowledges that Holden’s Big Deal was the first poker book he read, I apologize for my accent. Naturally, he’s not listening to me.
But if Devilfish doesn’t listen when you speak to him, he makes up for it by speaking as if you aren’t listening to him. He should consider getting some jewelry that says “Mumblefish.” After the fourth time he called one of my raises and folded, he said, “He’s writing in his book how he bluffed the Fish with a shit hand.”
The way it actually sounded was more like “zewhiting boohow bluffishit hand.”
Still looking for information, I just smiled and said, “It’s a career highlight, David.”
1:11 PM – Maureen Feduniak raises by big blind on the button. I call with Q-7s. The board is flop is Q-T-8. I don’t want to build too big a pot with this hand so I check-call. The turn is a seven. I consider check-raising but just call again. There are enough hands that beat me that I don’t want to bet the tournament on this so early. The river is a ten, which is an awful card. I check and Maureen bets again. This is my chance to get out of the hand, though I end up calling. She shows J-9o – she flopped a straight.
I muck, having lost 3,200 on the hand. Devilfish is beside himself. “Well played. Looks like the chips are moving from me to the scribbler to you. Just make sure you save some for me.” He then mutters that he’s going to bust me, nodding and saying, “We’ll see who’s around at the end of the day.”
The big guy in Seat 7 has allied himself with Ulliott, laughing way too much. He then smirks as I write this down and says, “Make sure you write in your book that you like to defend your blind.”
I’d like to harpoon this guy but instead I just say, “Why would I write that? I already know it. Maybe you should write it down.”
“I don’t have a book. Maybe during the break, I should get one. Maybe we all should!”
Mumblefish says, “Yeah, whole table of scribblers.” This, he punctuates by uncoordinated serial winking that resembles nothing so much as a broken turn signal.
1:43 PM – Maureen beats me out of another hand. I raise with 7-7 in early position and she flat-calls with Q-T and hits a queen on an otherwise garbage board. Devilfish and Laughing Boy yukk it up some more.
By the way, action comes to a stop everytime it’s Devilfish’s turn to act and a woman in shorts walks by.
2:20 PM – First break. I have 20,125 chips, just about what I started with, thanks primarily to what I’ve been able to take off David Ulliott.
This is what my table looks like:
Seat 1 – empty.
Seat 2 – me.
Seat 3 – Grandpa. A very nice man who’s older than me (not so many of them around these days!) wearing a UB hat and a tie with pictures of his three grandchildren on it. I first noticed the tie when a photographer stopped to take a picture of me. Grandpa stood and thrust the tie in front of my face. He’s asked me to mention in “my book” his grandkids-tie. But I like the guy. He mentioned to me that his boss/partner (he uses both terms) bought him into the Main Event. “He said it was on his Bucket List but he doesn’t play so he just bought me in.” He plays like you’d expect a guy with pictures of his grandkids on his tie would play – about one hand per hour.
Seat 4 – very solid Asian player who walks away from the table about four times per round to take and make phone calls.
Seat 5 – Mumbles Ulliott.
Seat 6 – empty.
Seat 7 – Laughing Boy, who plays dittohead to Devilfish, laughing even at the jokes that are unfunny or unintelligible – which is to say, all of them.
Seat 8 – Kojack with a tan. He plays almost every hand and has shown that he’ll limp with any two suited cards, like Q-5s.
Seat 9 – Maureen Feduniak, who I know plays tight, but I’m 0-for-4 against her. She’s hitting everything against me.
3 PM – 13,650. I just lost a big pot to Laughing Boy, who called my A-K raise with 8-8 and called the flop and turn, to be rewarded by an eight on the river.
Devilfish is getting angry with me, or at least pretending to. Before the deal on his big blind, he says, “You better write in your book that I’m reraising if you go after my blind. I’ll reraise you with nothing and I’ll bet the flop with nothing and I’ll move in on the turn with nothing. And you know it, too. Lay off my blind.”
I don’t need to test him with my 6-2o. Laughing Boy raises him and Kojack reraises. He folds his blind and I can’t resist, “You letting them take your blind David? I heard this big talk about reraising with nothing, moving in with nothing. What gives?”
“What, you think I’m going to play with nothing just to win the blinds?”
“Just the blinds?” I ask. “With two raises, you got a big pot to go after if you can beat us with nothing.”
“Oh, so you giving lessons now? Is that it?”
“Nope David,” I tell him. “Just trying to take lessons.”
Immediately after this, he comes unglued. “I’d much rather play against good players than the likes of you. I do well at a table with Phil Hellmuth, John Juanda, people who know how to play the game. The monkeys aren’t all in the trees anymore; they’re at this table.”
On the next hand, he raises the 100-200 blinds to 1,000 and everybody folds. On the hand after that, he raises to 1,700 and everybody folds.
“Play well and get punished for it by a bunch of lousy players. Everybody plays like shit. Well, I’m gonna play like shit too. See you how like that, bunch of fucking scribblers.”
3:15 PM – Devilfish has flushed himself down the toilet. He raised under the gun and was reraised by Laughing Boy, so he folded. On the next hand, he raised and was reraised by Kojack. He moved all-in and was immediately called. Ulliott showed 9-9. His opponent had Q-Q.
One thing I can say about David Ulliott: He was good to his word. He promised to play like shit and did. It’s actually kind of disappointing, really. I knew he’d be stranded in a parking lot in a battle of wits against me, but I didn’t expect him to declare war and fall on his sword before sunrise.
I’m sure you could say that 9-9 is a quality hand, better than a lot of others, etc. etc. etc. But if the guy really has an edge on the field, it’s later in the hand. He had 11,000 chips at the start of the hand. There was no reason to put the whole tournament on the line this early on 9-9.
Just a few hands before, I raised with Q-Q after Kojack limped. The flop came 7-5-2, all hearts. I didn’t have the queen of hearts. He led out with a big bet but I had seen him do this some as a bluff, so I called. The turn was the nine of hearts. He put out another big bet, like 3,000 or 4,000, and I folded.
The hand was being filmed by a camera crew and Devilfish was hamming it up, doing commentary and predicting that I would fold to the pressure. He then said to Kojack, “Show the bluff for TV?”
Kojack showed Ts-7s. I have to hand it to Ulliott. He got the guy to show how he was playing, which is a great tactic. But if I can fold Q-Q, he can certainly give up 9-9 before the flop.
After Kojack’s Q-Q held up against Devilfish’s 9-9, he got up, shook hands with Laughing Boy, and mumbled something unintelligible except for ” … shitty players … fucking scribbler …”
I stood up and held out my hand, but as I expected (and hoped), Mumblefish didn’t shake and instead mumbled his way out of the World Series of Poker. Grandpa said to me, “Real class act, huh?”
“Well, what do you expect from a guy who’s had a picture of a penis on his cell phone?” (Obviously, I can’t say whether it’s his penis but he has been known to show it around, claiming it’s his.)
Grandpa watched as Ulliott disappeared into the crowd in the aisle. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing something like that but after spending three hours with the man, I can believe it.”
