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#809 – 2009 WSOP #67 – Vegas on $2,000 a Day #13 – The Mad Science of the Table Draw
So much of my experience at these tournaments depends on who is at my table. Granted, you don’t have to be a big name to say or do something entertaining. Like the local seated next to me who asked where I was from and, when I told him “Scottsdale,” he asked, “Where’s that?” Or the guy seated next to Erick Lindgren who was clearly a fan and peppered Erick with questions like, “What’s your favorite NBA team?” (“Whichever one I bet on.”) and “Do you have a favorite college basketball team?” (“Whichever one I bet on.”) Even then, however, the humorousness of this dialogue depended on Erick Lindgren being at the table.
At the start of the $2,500 OEOB/SEOB, I was a little depressed that I didn’t know a single person at my table. One of the fun things about the 5 PM events is that a lot of my friends play them, so regardless of the outcome I’ll spend my evening with friends, who also happen to be some of the world’s best poker players.
In addition to the Annie Duke/Mike Matusow table, it seemed after the first break that every nearby table was filling up with people I knew, except mine. Erick Lindgren and David Singer signed up at the break and were waiting at Brasilia #181 for them to pull players from other games so they could start. The NBA Finals were going on, and Erick pulled out a small television with a long antenna. He balanced it in front of him on the padded rail and watched the basketball game.
A little while later, I noticed that antenna poking up at a table with Jens Voertmann and Eli Elezra. At the table next to that, right in front of me, were Cyndy Violette, Dave Stann, Layne Flack, and Marcel Luske. Even boring table #191, behind and to my left, where the massage girl looked like she wished she was someplace else, had Shannon Elizabeth.
This is what I wrote in my notes about the situation as it existed at 8:30 PM:
Here I paid $2,500 to enter so I could research the lives and games of the world’s top players and all I can tell you after three hours is that I need to update the selections on my iPod Shuffle. Uncle Tilty’s gonna pitch a fit when he sees a ‘$2,500 – research expense’ on my next invoice if I don’t get some material soon. In this economy, that could be dangerous, so I hope this table breaks soon and I move to a more interesting one, or I start playing some old-school good poker.
In my next event, $1,500 HORSE, I found myself at a virtual poker all-star game after the first break. Annie Duke, Erick Lindgren, and Jennifer Harman were all seated at my table. I also found out that the player across the table with whom I had repeatedly tangled was Sam Simon, one of the creators of THE SIMPSONS.
Soon, the rail was swelling with spectators. I even got to use my line, “The only player I don’t recognize at this table is ME.”
But nobody was really in a chatting mood. Annie and Jennifer aren’t friends, and Erick had to keep fending off people rubbing it in that he bet the wrong way in the NBA Finals. And if Sam Simon scoffed at my lame comic-book-guy-from-The-Simpsons reference BEFORE I won most of his chips in Razz, there wasn’t much hope in our bonding after.
The best I can say about that particular experience is that I played well in front of a lot of players I really respect and chipped up significantly. I’d have felt really good about myself if I didn’t go and lose all those chips, busting before the end of Day 1 to a bunch of strangers.
The all-star table broke and I moved to a table where the only person I recognized was Shirley Rosario. Shirley is a good limit-poker player from LA and has a website that, back in early days of researching SUICIDE KING, was a valuable resource for pictures and bios of top players. It was nice to see Shirley, though it seems we get seated together at every limit tournament.
On this night, however, she wasn’t in a good mood. In Seat 3 was some dude who was annoying her and the woman in Seat 8. In my very first hand at the table, I got to see what was apparently part of a continuing saga. After Seat 3 lost an OEOB hand to Seat 8, he threw down his cards and said sarcastically, “Nice raise with deuce-seven there. Well played.”
That set off an argument about some previous hand they had played where Seat 3 played some unbelievable hand to beat Seat 8. And it also brought in some hand where Seat 3 beat Shirley in Razz with a ten showing, along with Seat 3’s habit of complaining about how other players are playing.
It got really tense when Seat 8 walked away from the table to share a few words with her boyfriend. Seat 3 yelled over, “Yeah, go cry about it to your boyfriend.” It got so ugly I thought a fist-fight was going to break out. “I’ll take you on anytime heads-up junior.” “Fatso.” “Unibrow.” “Bitch tits.”
I went card dead after that and slowly lost my chips in this environment. At least, I figured, I’d get a good blog out of the nasty vibe.
But then Seat 3 fucked me over by APOLOGIZING.
I couldn’t believe it. He told Shirley, the woman in Seat 8, and the rest of the table that they were completely right and he had no business behaving the way he did. He very sincerely asked them, and all of us, to forgive him.
There was no prompting, no threat of violence, no floorperson threatening penalties, not even a break to cool down and think it over. My great rant about poker players being unredeemable dicks just evaporated into thin air.
When Seat 8 was all-in, Seat 3 was actually rooting for her. And when Shirley Rosario went out, he stood up and gave her a little bow.
It was so disgusting that it didn’t even bother me when I busted out myself, not long before midnight.
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