#850 – 2009 WSOP Revisted #9 – Memoirs of a Scribbler

I started playing poker in casinos in 1991. For the next few years, when I could get to Las Vegas or Los Angeles, I would make a side trip into the poker rooms. I didn’t play much between 1994 and 2003, but I started playing again that summer and – well, I’ve written about most of the things that have happened to me since so I don’t need to repeat them now. Because I write about poker, I always have a notebook and a pen at the table. These items have gotten a ridiculous amount of attention over the years.

When I played back in the Nineties, I was usually coming from a day of doing attorney work or was getting in a few hours of poker before doing some work the next day. Some of these times, I’d bring a brief or deposition transcript to the table and jot some notes between hands, especially if I was playing poker during legal “prep” time.

In 1992, at the Bicycle Club, a player at my table complained that my note-taking was bothering him. I started laughing at him and, when it turned out he was serious, I said, “Call a floorman.” Mind you, earlier in the same trip, I saw a guy get so mad after a hand that, instead of mucking his cards, he tried to rip them in half. Because plastic cards are almost impossible to tear, he spent about ten seconds rending and grunting before throwing them down on the table. Then he sat down and, after the dealer fanned out a fresh deck, played the next hand. All the while, nobody said a word. After another hand, I saw one player at the next table threaten to kill his opponent, and both men jumped up, knocking their chairs over. A floorman standing right behind me didn’t make a move, either to call security, keep them apart, or restore order. When I asked him to do something, he shrugged, “Don’t make a big deal; they’ll work it out themselves.”

I was pretty sure the floorman wasn’t going to come down to hard on me for writing in a folder.

Frankly, I was surprised anybody noticed. Especially back then, a lot of crazy crap went on at poker tables and no one said anything. In just one night at the Horseshoe back then, the following all went on right before my eyes, without anybody saying a word: 

*A guy with a Prince Valiant haircut fell asleep between hands.

*One player’s false teeth fell out of his mouth and on to the felt. (He scooped them up and jammed them back in.)

*A woman in wearing a bright red wig was wearing lipstick that looked like she applied it with her feet.

*Someone else at the table returned from a dinner break with a gravy stain on his shirt larger than a dollar bill.

*One player had multiple open sores on his arms.

Anthony Holden wrote in BIG DEAL that the only player who mentioned his note-taking during his year as a professional was Johnny Chan and that happened just once. It always surprised me when someone said something back then.

For the past several years, I have written for my livelihood, mostly about poker. I would not be doing a professional job if I didn’t take notes. Besides, there is still so much strange stuff going on at the table that, if I didn’t keep some kind of record, no one would believe me. In fact, without writing it down, some of it I wouldn’t believe myself.

Between 7 and 11 AM on one May morning in 2004, I took notes while playing $15-$30 LHE at the Bellagio – some of the most important and useful I would ever take. Several tables over and up two steps, Andy Beal and Chip Reese were playing $100,000-$200,000 LHE. Tipped off that the game would be going, I arrived at the poker room just after 7 AM, there were three games going: $15-$30, and $100,000-$200,000. Between hands in my game (in which I actually won $300), I took the notes that were the basis for most of the material on pps. 231-233 of SUICIDE KING. These notes were especially important because this was the highest-stakes game in history, and because it was the only part of the action in the book that I personally witnessed.

I have also used my notes for the poker table to write about what it’s like (a) cashing for the first time in the World Series, (b) playing for the first time in the Main Event, (c) making a World Series final table for the first time, and (d) butting heads with Jeffery Lasandro on his way to an historic third bracelet in 2009. I have also, over time, gathered information that I used for stories and profiles about Dan Harrington, Mike Matusow, Annie Duke, Eric Lindgren, Howard Lederer, Randy Jensen, Archie Karas, Jennifer Harman, Chris Ferguson, and many others. From taking notes at the poker table, I got the story firsthand about the infamous Matusow-Forrest weight-loss bet of 2008.

Sometimes, it’s important just to keep a record of the “routine” things that go on – because routine things never go on at poker tables. I’ve always thought that they empty the local loony bins in Vegas right before each year’s Main Event. I developed this idea playing in one of the last events, $1,500 NLHE, before the 2007 Main Event. I was seated in the infamous “tent,” which felt like it had the structural integrity of a house of cards by the end of the Series. The event was packed, the tent was packed, and there was no room to spare at or between the individual tables.

In spite of all this, some guy at my table bought a plate of chicken wings and two slices of pizza during a break and brought them back to eat at the table. He had to balance one plate on the rail and the other on his crotch. After eating hurried bites of greasy pizza and greasy chicken wings, he would dab his fingers on the same greasy triangle of napkin before looking at his cards. This happened on every single hand. The whole room was insane. Some guy was wearing a giant chef hat. Another player was getting a massage in a part of the room (and, I guess, a part of his body) so cramped that the massage therapist had to lie under the table and rest her chin above his butt-crack for leverage.

I was writing it down as fast as I could, barely remembering to play my cards.

What I didn’t know was that Eric “Rizen” Lynch was sitting at the same table. I knew Eric from his reputation online but had never met him before. A couple of days later, Lynch blogged about the experience much differently than I had. According to his blog, “I was at a table with John Gale and Michael Craig in the $1,500 no limit. Michael Craig was taking some REALLY detailed notes and I actually set up some reverse tells on him that worked (unfortunately he drew out) but it was kind of slick to set up some misinformation then watch it work.”

I explained in the blog that I couldn’t understand why someone would think I was writing down tells. When I explained what I was actually writing (described above and in blog #196), I concluded by saying, “Eric Lynch thought he was playing chess and I was playing checkers. I have bad news for ya, Rizen. You were playing checkers and I was mesmerized by the shiny plastic pieces and the colorful cardboard.”

At the next World Series, in 2008, my note-taking actually led to a confrontation with David “Devilfish” Ulliott on the first day of the Main Event.  Devilfish had decided to attract attention to himself by behaving like a maniac and acting like an asshole. For some reason, he made me his target, flat-calling four of my raises during the first hour and then folding each time after I bet the flop or turn. After the fourth time, he announced to the nonexistent audience, “He’s writing in his book how he bluffed the Fish with a shit hand.”

After making some empty threats, he told me in detail how bad I was. “I’d much rather play against good players than the likes of you. I do well at a table with Phil Hellmuth, John Juanda, people who know how to play the game. The monkeys aren’t all in the trees anymore; they’re at this table. Play well and get punished for it by a bunch of lousy players. Everybody plays like shit. Well, I’m gonna play like shit too. See how you like that, bunch of fucking scribblers.”

Then he proved to be a man of his word, playing like shit and busting in the next fifteen minutes. http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/poker-blog/2008/07/460_wsop_notebook_33_my_day_1-a_recap_part_ii_devilfish_goes_to_war.php

Poker’s annexation of Twitter Nation, by the 2009 World Series, led to so many people tweeting at the Series that I figured I had ceased being a curiosity. If anything, I might be noticed as some quaint figure out of the distant past, with people looking at my pen and notebook as if I had brought an oil lamp and a monocle to the table.

Nevertheless, my notebook still proved to be a source of contention. It apparently annoyed one opponent so much that, after beating out of a big pot, he rubbed it in by saying, “It must be a lot of work writing down every hand you play.”

I said, “I don’t write down every hand I play. I write down every hand YOU play.” Everybody at the table started laughing except this guy, who didn’t have a response.

At another event, there was one player at my table who just could not get out of my way. He was playing too many hands, betting too much, and between knowing how he was playing and getting good cards and knowing how he’d pay me off, I was getting a lot of chips from him. After he called and lost again to me on the river, he said, “I don’t know what you’re writing in your book but it’s working.” He was a young guy and he was actually paying me a compliment so we started talking. I told him the Eric Lynch story, the point of which of course is that what I write in my notebook has nothing whatsoever to do with how my opponents play. Everyone at the table was amused by the story but the kid missed the point. He made me promise that I would show him what I had written about him after we were done playing.

Here’s the irony, which is all I have since he eventually busted me: he got most of my chips making a play he had no business making, if I in fact had a “read” on him. He raised, so I reraised with T-T. I just knew he wasn’t strong enough to stay in the hand, which would have required him to go all-in, because to call would have taken most of his remaining stack. He moved in anyway with K-Qo. He was worried I knew he was weak. I fact knew he was weak (though it had nothing to do with my notes) and he played the hand anyway and drew out.

He busted me a little later when I moved all-in pre-flop with A-K and he called with J-J. But I got the last laugh: after I busted, I wouldn’t show him my notes.

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