FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#466 – WSOP Notebook #39 – My Happy Ending, Part II

Posted by Editor | Filed under My family, My Life, WSOP 2008

NUT JOB

The first thing I noticed on my last day as a participant of the World Series of Poker was the disappearance of the Nutmobile, and that bothered me.

Planters, “the Official Nut of the World Series of Poker” (for those of you who thought it was Phil Hellmuth) had parked the Nutmobile in front of the Convention Center before Day 1 of the Main Event. The Nutmobile was a giant yellow vehicle – a truck or an Airstream – that was mocked up to look like a peanut-shaped sports car with Mr. Peanut on top, looking like he was driving.

But it wasn’t there for Day 2-A and I wondered why. Hertz is “the Official Rental Car of the World Series of Poker” and they’ve had luxury cars parked in front of the Convention Center throughout the Series. Suspiciously, there were two identical yellow Corvettes in the place the Nutmobile used to occupy.

Corporate in-fighting between Planters and Hertz? Bizarre bioscience experiment gone wrong? Draw your own conclusions.
TIE GAME

Walking the long hallway toward the Amazon Room, the player I referred to on Day 1-A as Grandpa fell into step immediately behind me. I noticed two things about him.

First, Grandpa is nearly seven feet tall. How did I miss this during our fourteen hours together last Thursday? It must have been because I never saw him standing.

Second, and this was completely predictable, he was wearing the same tie as he wore on Thursday, with pictures of his grandchildren on it.

This reminded me of a story from one of my favorite books, Mad Ducks and Bears, by George Plimpton. It made me feel good to remember the story and calmed me down before playing, so I’ll repeat it here.

In Mad Ducks and Bears, a meandering follow-up to Paper Lion, Plimpton hangs out with John Gordy and Alex Karras, at the time NFL offensive and defensive linemen, respectively, with the Detroit Lions. Karras steals the book and I think the project was motivated by Plimpton’s desire to capture Alex’s creativity and manic energy, since he was serving a suspension from the NFL during Plimpton’s time in the Lions’ training camp for Paper Lion.

Karras mentioned how, as a boy, he had a single framed photograph in his bedroom. Though a visitor might have thought it was a picture of his father, a burly man in a coat and tie, it was actually football great Bronco Nagurski. Nagurski was smiling, wearing a wide tie with a giant flower on it. It was Alex’s first connection with pro football.

Twenty-five years later, Karras was suspended from the NFL for a year and picking up money as a professional wrestler. He showed up at some arena where he was booked to wrestle and found the small, dank locker room. In the locker next to his, hanging there, was that tie with the giant flower on it.

Bronco Nagurski was his tag-team partner that night!

John Gordy, listening to the story with Plimpton, was incredulous. “Come on! It couldn’t have been the same tie.”

Karras: “I swear it was.”

Gordy: “After twenty-five years? It would have rotted off his neck.”

Karras: “Maybe it was made of asbestos.”
BLACK WAS RED WITH RAGE

I was seated in the Red Section of the Amazon Room, Table 22, Seat 3. The problem with the red section is that’s where they run the cash games. That means my table would break early – which ended up being a shame because it was a great table assignment – and there would be incessant announcements hectoring players into newly-opened cash games. During one of my last preliminary events at the Series, I was seated next to Andy Black in the Red Section and the announcements drove him crazy.

Black complained about the announcements, where were loud, repetitive, and continuous. The announcer actually mocked him, whispering one announcement, then repeating it in a booming voice.

“NEW GAME OPENING UP ON TABLE 41 IN THE RED SECTION!”

Black yelled, “Shut the fuck up before I open up your throat!”

Black actually had words with the announcer during the break and I noticed the announcements in the Red Section during Day 2-A of the Main Event were made in a hushed voice.
THE HAPPY ENDING

I busted after 6 PM, after hours and hours of nothing going right. It was a disappointment, but I was down about it for less than five minutes. My hopes were high after making the second day of the Main Event and it appeared for awhile that I would be able to redeem a lot of unfavorable outcomes in one swoop, especially because I was very pleased with how I was playing.

But I immediately realized all I had to weigh against those dashed hopes:

* The whole Series, in a manner of speaking, was a kind of a freeroll. I had won my way into the Main Event on Full Tilt, had cashed against the toughest field I faced in the entire Series, and had balanced a lot of my dismal results with successes in the satellite room. Full Tilt was carrying my expenses as I wrote about the Series and I had turned in some good accounts.

* Just that I made it here and was able to stay for most of the seven weeks was a triumph. My out-of-pocket expenses were reimbursed and the admitted large amount I’d spent on tournament entries had come from money won at last year’s Series and in online tournaments since. Jo Anne has returned to health (though the last stages of radiation treatment included the unpredictably predictable side effects that made it hellish just when we thought it was all over). My family appears to have weathered its various storms. A lot worse things can happen than busting out of poker tournaments. I got a taste of some of those, a taste made sweet by a new appreciation for health and family routine.

* If I walk away from poker writing and poker playing right now, I will have had a remarkable time. I don’t necessarily think I WILL walk away, but who can predict the future? My engagement to write this blog is open-ended. I was originally brought on in early 2007 to cover that year’s World Series. When it was over, they asked me to stay on for WSOP-Europe. I lingered for months after, figuring they’d tell me any day that the string had run out, only to be surprised when they asked me early this year to cover the 2008 World Series. Maybe now is when the thread breaks; it’s their call. On the other hand, I am wrestling with what I want to do when I grow up. (I will be eligible to play the Seniors Event in the 2009 World Series.) I still believe it’s my destiny to find and tell great stories and, if that’s true, my time in poker is nearly done. If I ever produce a – another? – great book, I know for sure it won’t be about poker.

It’s time for me to shit or get off the pot. Unless they want me to cover WSOP-Europe. Or maybe I have another good month or two in the online tournaments. Or maybe I can balance that with my idea for a movie script I want to write, a sci-fi political comedy involving terrorists, prostitutes, and zombies under the dome of the U.S. Capitol.

We’ll have to see about all that, won’t we.

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