#817 – 2009 WSOP #75 – Vegas on $2,000 a day #15 – Fifty is the New Sixty

[This was written as I played the Senior Championship on June 22.]

Today, Monday, June 22, is Senior Day at the WSOP. The noon event is the $1,000 Senior NLHE World Championship. And then, as some kind of sick joke, Harrah’s scheduled the $2,500 Razz event for 5 PM. That means there are a lot of people in the Convention Center referring to Mickey Appleman as “that hippy kid.” Of all the stereotypical jokes I’ve heard about today, the best by far was by Aaron Bartley. When I told Aaron several weeks ago that I had planned on playing the event for the first time, he asked, “Is that the day they have the dinner break at 5 PM?”

In fact, it wasn’t a joke by all that much. For the first break, they gave up thirty minutes instead of the customary twenty. I assume that had something to do with the extra time we need to get to and from the bathroom or to account for us getting lost on the way back.

No more jokes. I am now part of this group and I have to represent. They say forty is the new thirty, and sixty is the new fifty, right? But fifty doesn’t have a catchy tagline. Is fifty really that old? A half century can go by in the blink of an eye. When you think about it, not that much has changed.

Fifty years ago Americans lived in a dangerous, uncertain world.  Same now. Our mysterious enemy is Al Qaida. Theirs was “The Ruskies.” Our number one bad guy is Bin Laden; theirs was Khrushchev. Their President encouraged calm and patience, and like ours, had an unfamiliar first name (Dwight) and last name (Eisenhower).

Back then, computers cost $10 million dollars and were the size of a house, so I guess that’s different. TV was also a different deal. The consoles were gigantic, the displays were tiny, and they picked up just three or four channels. On the other hand, you were more likely to find something decent on.

As I sat down at my seat in the Senior Championship, I remembered well the day I traded in my Ray Bans for reading glasses at the poker table. I was playing in a private game with Andy Beal. I was there for the social aspect and I wanted to be around if something interesting happened, but I really didn’t feel like playing for Andy-Beal-kind-of-money, even Andy-Beal-social-kind-of-money. I figured the most I could afford to lose before swallowing my pride and telling everybody I was tapped out was $4,000. I lost that on the first hand.

We were playing No-Limit Hold ‘Em and I was in the big blind with Ac-9c. I called Andy’s raise, flopped a nut flush draw and turned the flush. Nevertheless, Beal was betting all the way and I called all-in on the river. I was somewhat concerned about the two queens on the board but the action in the hand didn’t really fit him having a queen, and I knew he bets big and recklessly in these social games so I called him with an ace-high flush.

“Quads,” he said, flipping over pocket queens. I dejectedly turned over my flush, revealing that I had actually called him with ace-high. I had the ace of clubs and the nine of SPADES.

I have not played a single hand of poker since without wearing a pair of reading glasses perched on my nose.

These are my notes, more or less verbatim, from my four-and-half hours in the parallel world of Oldville.

12:14 PM: First Senior Moment of the tournament. The first player to act raised to 125. Another player reraised but only to 200. He was told he had to make the minimum reraise to 225. The original raiser immediately calls – out of turn, as there are still six other players to act. Then the reraiser bets just 100 on the flop, 100 on the turn, and checks the river.

In the first fifteen minutes I saw one player open-limp with A-K and another player make a minimum reraise with K-J.

12:20 PM: Under-the-gun raiser makes it 250. On the next hand, the second player to act raised 8x to 200.

12:25 PM:  I swear I am not making this up. I smell Vick’s mentholated rub at my table.

12:45 PM: The player to my left, who earlier open-limped with A-K, openraises to 250.

1:35 PM:  We’ve had at least three seven-way pots, one of which was raised in early position and called six times.

1:43 PM: This was an actual sequence. In an unraised pot, the dealer called “six-handed.” He turns over the flop and the first player, even though no bet is pending, mucks his cards. The fourth player then immediately bets 100, skipping over the two others still to act.

1:50 PM: Our table breaks and I immediately like my new table. This crowd seems to get all my jokes. Everybody laughed when I referred to the other tournaments going on as the “junior events.”

2:03 PM: We go on break for a half hour instead of the customary twenty minutes. On a recent hand, I limped on the button – the seventh player in the pot – with 2d-5d. All seven players checked it all the way down with the following board: 4-4-4-J-3. I turned over my hand and said, “I’m a lock for the low.” Everyone cracked up.

2:36 PM: We restart. I notice two T-shirts as I am sitting down. First, “Old dudes rule.”  Second, “Give it your best shot (Grandma)!”

3:25 PM: I have this table and these players figured out, not that it will necessarily do me any good. Nobody here plays aggressive-tricky and they all play passive-tricky. This means it’s easy to pick up chips in small pots by raising and betting people out. It also means that everybody calls along to either trap or hit their hand at the end, and I have to watch out for that. The difficulty, however, is that the stacks aren’t that big. If you make a raise with nothing and it’s called, there is the prospect of having to make a continuation bet on the flop. And even then, if the other player has you beat, he’s just going to call. This becomes even more complicated when your nothing can turn into something, enough to stay in the hand under normal circumstances, but not something good enough for a player that calls and traps 100% of the time. There just aren’t enough chips to make many mistakes in this type of game.

4:30 PM:  I’m out. I was dealt Q-8o in the big blind. I know there aren’t any bad beat stories that start with Q-8o but… A player in late position raised my 150 big blind but just to 350, and the player next to him in the cut-off called. It was just 200 to me so I called. I hit a dream flop J-10-9, for a Q-high straight. I checked. The original raiser checked. The player in the cut-off bet 1,000. I had less than 2,500 left so I moved all-in. He instantly called and I braced to see K-Q … but it never came. He called the raise with J-9o for two-pair. I was a 7-to-1 favorite to more than double-up, but the other player made a full house when a nine hit on the turn, sending me to the rail. This has left me deciding whether to play a satellite or the Razz, or just commit hari-kari.

 The only positive in all this is that I have busted early enough that I will not be having dinner with my good friends Des Wilson and Anthony Holden. I say this is “good” news because I received an e-mail yesterday from Des suggesting that we have dinner at Buzio’s, the seafood restaurant that I have made a point, in this blog and in person to him on at least two occasions, of saying it is my least favorite restaurant in the world. I e-mailed him back to request a change of venue but received no response, therefore being left with the prospect of having to show up and have to eat their slumgullion or risk having my good friends think I was standing them up. Now that I’ve busted, I have the option of playing something else saving myself from another encounter with Buzio’s.

• No Related Post