#822 – 2009 WSOP #80 – Vegas on $2,000 a Day #17 – Razz or Buzios? Tough Choice

[This is a resumption of my accounts of the strange things I observed - and sometimes did - on June 22, the day that started with the Senior Championship at noon and didn't end until I finished Day 1 of the Razz at 3 AM on the 23rd.]

I busted out of the Senior Championship at 4:35 PM. I was torn between taking another shot at a single-table satellite, entering the $2,500 Razz, and making a dinner appointment with my author friends Tony Holden and Des Wilson. Based on how I’ve been playing, it normally would have been an easy call to blow off poker and have dinner with friends, except Des insisted on dinner at Buzios. As I told Des, and as I have told you several times – and as I have told Des that I have told you several times – Buzios is my least favorite restaurant in Las Vegas if not the entire world.

After I learned that the satellites were slow in running because of all the players still left in the Senior event, I chose Razz. I showed up at Table 235, Seat 1 of the Brasilia Room at 5:45 PM, about a half-hour into the first level. These are my notes, mostly as I wrote them at the table that night.

5:45 PM – Dario Minieri is at my table in Seat 7. What’s that KID doing playing Razz? I look over my left shoulder and see Dewey Tomko, Jerry Buss, and Eskimo Clark together at a table. That’s more like it.

7:35 PM – We started with 7,500 chips. I have 6,750. Returning from break, I see that Huckleberry Seed has entered and is sitting at my table in Seat 8. Seed is one of the best Razz players in the world, with two World Series bracelets. The night before the 2006 Razz event, I was lucky enough to get a Razz lesson from Huck and Ted Forrest (who has a Razz bracelet himself), which appears nearly verbatim in the Strategy Guide.

And Elvis is our dealer. There is a World Series dealer named Joe who has cultivated the Elvis Presley look. He has heavy black slicked-back hair, long sideburns, and wears big Elvis Seventies-style sunglasses.

7:40 PM – My social plans are starting to run together. I never got in touch with Des or Tony to tell them that I couldn’t/wouldn’t join them for dinner. Annie Duke, sitting at the next table, owes me dinner and offered to make good tonight. I asked, “What restaurant could we possibly go to where we can get there, eat, and get back in less than sixty minutes?”

Annie said, “I know the perfect place. It’s a seafood restaurant and it’s right here at the Rio. It’s called Buzios.”

Ugh. Now Annie’s become one of the Pod People too.

8 PM – 8,800 chips. Huck is watching my play. I just lost a showdown and he stood up to see my hole cards before the dealer between us swept them away. He guessed my starting hand, I think with approval. It was an ordinary looking starting hand but I put in raises on third and fourth streets because the other exposed cards strongly favored me, and it seemed like Seed picked that up. And I’ve stolen at least one pot from him, using the call-steal that he taught me about that night at Ted Forest’s house. You can only use that against a good player and I knew that it had a good chance against working against him.

It is actually cool that Huck is sitting to my right and watching my play, not just for the obvious reason that I must be doing well if he approves. This will also keep me from making stupid plays because I don’t want to look bad in front of somebody that taught me the game.

8:05 PM – By the way, we’re half-way through this level and having Huckleberry Seed to his right has definitely affected Dario Minieri’s play. During the first two levels, Dario played almost every hand. I think he’s played about two since Huck showed up.

8:10 PM – Annie excitedly came by my table. “Elvis is dealing at my table. I tweeted a picture.” Everything is Twitter with that girl.

8:43 PM – 9,000 chips. Annie is on the war path. “I hate this fucking game,” she told me. That allowed me to inform her – factually, I think – that she has given me the exact same quote four years running.

8:55 PM – Annie has come by my table to complain four times in the last ten minutes. She tells me that she hates Raxx so much and is getting such bad luck that she’s playing a game called Sneezey on her iPhone. Then she comes by and complains that she‘s getting bad beats in Sneezey.

10:40 PM – We’re back from the dinner break and I have 14,000, thanks to Dario. He played Razz super-aggressively and I think I know how to play the game against that type of player. I got three bets from him on sixth street after he was essentially drawing dead.

11 PM – Huck is running bad here. The dealer messed up a river card which cost him a huge pot against Dario. Then he lost two other hands since the break where opponents were clearly chasing and hit. He was just all-in on his ante and won against Dario’s three-pair.

11:15 PM – Huck Seed has busted. Hassan Habib is now in Seat 6 and Richard Brodie has taken over Huck’s seat in Seat 8. The guy in Seat 3 is a Razz old-timer right out of Central Casting. He mutters under his breath every time he loses a pot to Dario, which is often. A friend of his comes by on the rail periodically to ask him his chip count. He always answers with a number and a story. Such as, “7,500, but I can’t catch a break with the cards. I have 2-3-4-5 and can’t beat nothing on the river.”

11:30PM – O’Neil Longson and Katja Thater are at the table in front of me. O’Neil has head leaning against his right hand. I am surprised that doesn’t leave a mark, because every time I see him at the Series he is either sleeping at the table or he has his head resting in his hand, likely both. On the other hand, he has three bracelets, at least one of them in Razz.

1:30 AM – Annie comes by the table. “See that guy over at my table who is, like, a million? He keeps falling asleep. We have to wake him up every hand to ante.” I don’t say a word but point to table in front of me where O’Neil Longson is sitting with his eyes closed and his head in his hands.

2:55 AM – 31,900 chips. End of Day one.

• No Related Post