FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#756 – 2009 WSOP #14 – Seen & Heard #4 – From the Undisclosed Location, or Brother, Can You Spare Ten Dimes?

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Life is good in the Undisclosed Location. Without sacrificing the Playboy Mansion ambiance, the Full Tilt Corps of Engineers has managed to outfit me and my assistant Shauna with desks, chairs, electrical outlets and – welcome to the twenty-first century! – internet access.

Now, just by sitting behind my desk at the door, Full Tilt comes to me. Erik Seidel walked by at about 3:15.

Michael: Erik, are you out on break or … out?

Erik: I’m no longer in the Deuce to Seven.

Michael: Oh, that’s a shame. In my blog today, I listed the Full Tilt pros still in and said after your name, “It’s an odd-numbered year so Seidel is a lock for the bracelet.” I hope I didn’t jinx you.

Erik: That must have been it. I felt like something went wrong. It must have been a jinx.

Michael: (laughing)

Michael: (under his breath) I’m sure it couldn’t have been a playing mistake or anything like that.

Andy Bloch and Chris Ferguson have been in and out. (By that, I mean they’ve been IN the Undisclosed Location and OUT of the $1,500 NLHE-6.) Shauna, sitting next to me, asked Ferguson as he walked in, “How are you doing Chris?”

“Not so hot. I’m not zero for eight.”

Good to see that Shauna has picked up my instinctive knack for asking people at the World Series how they’re doing at the worst possible time. But since Shauna started it, I figured, when will I get another opportunity to give shit to Chris Ferguson?

“And how’s your brother Marc doing in the Series? One-for-one, right?”

“Yeah, though he’s playing the $1,500 six-handed. He says six-handed is less boring for him.”

Marc Ferguson is a software engineer who now, like Chris, lives in Vegas. He has an active mind for games and, though he could buy in to any tournament he wants, haunts the Omaha-Eight-or-Better satellites. He won a satellite to get into the $1,500 OEOB and finished in the money, earning about $2,900. He’s too modest to act on it but he told me the other night he thought about telling the players at his table, “I’m here to try to improve on the Ferguson family’s two bracelets in Omaha-Eight-or-Better.”

That gave me an idea. What about organizing some kind of Sibling Poker Challenge on Full Tilt?

I noticed that Andy Bloch’s brother Jon was in from Boston for Andy’s fortieth birthday. Jon Bloch, like Marc Ferguson, shared his brother’s (and his family’s) love of games and still plays a bit of poker.

Right after I started writing for Full Tilt, I was following an FTOPS event and noticed that a player named “Jon Bloch” was building chips in the PLO. I found out from Andy this was his brother and wrote about his making the final table. When Andy was near the chip lead in the next evening’s FTOPS event, I headlined my post “Brother of Jon Bloch Near Chip Lead.” (For the record, Jon played in one event of this World Series before returning home and did not cash. That puts him behind Marc Ferguson but still ahead of his brother and Chris Ferguson.)

When I brought up the Sibling Challenge, though Chris wasn’t immediately on board. “I don’t know,” he said in his usual careful, indecisive, you’ll-be-old[er]-and-gray[er]-before-I-make-a-commitment fashion. “I certainly wouldn’t want to take on the Lederer family.” Because I like the idea of somehow of pairing the professionals with their amateur siblings, and because Annie works for a competing online poker site, I told him we’d try to swing it so Howard and Katy Lederer representated Family Lederer.

I told Ferguson that I was going to use my promotional abilities – remember, I’m the one who got Andy Beal and the pros back together to play in 2006 – to make this challenge happen.

“Screw that,” he said. “I just want to beat my brother.”

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