David Singer doesn’t play World Series events hoping to make final tables. He plays to win bracelets and is satisfied with nothing less. After finishing sixth in the $50,000 HORSE event and taking home $411,840, he was back in the Rio today, just twelve hours later, to play in the $3,000 Omaha High-Low Eight-or-Better event. I caught up with him in the Full Tilt lounge.
Hanging out in the Full Tilt lounge just prior to the start of the $3,000 Omaha High-Low Eight-or-Better tournament, Mike Matusow was being his usual loquacious self. Chatty, loud, intense, Mike talks like he plays poker: fast and furious.
Last night, I started accumulating chips soon after we got into the money in the $50,000 HORSE event. I actually knocked out the bubble boy with a pair of deuces. He tried to raise my bring-in with A-K-J, and he didn’t have enough chips to get me off of it, and he ended up not making a pair so my deuces won. After that, I had a really good hold’em round where I picked up some big pairs that held up, and I also managed to steal a bunch of pots when I didn’t have a hand. I lost almost no hold’em pots. That’s what got me a lot of my chips. That got me from like $300,000 to $900,000.
Just a few rounds into the second day of the $2,500 Short-Handed No-Limit Hold’em event, Phil Gordon was on the ropes, having been crippled after losing a coin-flip hand. He shrugged it off and doubled up, thanks to a well-timed move and a little luck. His all-in raise with A-7 got called by a player holding A-10, and Phil caught the 7 he needed on the turn. A couple hands later, he flopped two pair with K-2 to beat another player’s pocket nines. As nice as the change in luck was, he was still on the ropes with only $35,000.
Yesterday during the first day of the $2,500 Short-Handed No-Limit Hold’em event, my entire chip stack was at risk a couple times. I was very short-stacked with about two hours to go. Everyone folded to me on the button. The blinds were big. I only had eight big blinds. I can’t raise and fold because I’ll be pot committed so I just moved in. Jim McManus found a hand that he liked and he called me. I got it all in really bad: 10-4 for me versus McManus’s A-Q. But that’s a 38% shot. It’s not as bad as it sounds. You always feel kind of silly when you turn over a hand like 10-4. I got lucky and won that hand. Obviously, I wasn’t thrilled to get my money in only 38% to win, but you’re going to have to win a few of those to win this tournament, especially because everyone is relatively short-stacked.
I won’t go into the specifics of the hand, but suffice to say that it was the kind of thing that could only happen in Pot-Limit Omaha. Three of us were all in on the turn, and when we turned our cards up, we saw that we all had the nuts, and we all had redraws. It was sick and brutal and there was nothing any of us could have done about it.
“Want to run it two or three times,” one opponent said.
“Sure,” was my answer. I had $2,000 invested in this pot – a lot for me. And there were plenty of cards that would cost me any share of the pot.
“You can’t run the river multiple times,” the dealer chimed in.
“What are you talking about?” a tablemate replied. “We’ve been running multiple rivers for the last twenty hours.”
He was right. We had been.
“Well, I was told that you can’t run the river multiple times in low-limit games.”
“There’s $6,000 in that pot. I’m not sure this is a low-limit game exactly,” chimed in another player. He then noted that there was about $25,000 on the table.
“Call the floor,” I snapped.
Perhaps trying to gain a monopoly on the brightest minds in the game, Full Tilt keeps adding poker stars to its already talent-laden roster. One of the latest additions to the team is Eric “E-Fro” Froelich, who leapt from the realm of online poker onto the poker world’s greatest stage at last year’s World Series by winning the $1,500 Limit Hold’em event. His Full Tilt jersey bears the number 18, which represents good luck (literally “chai” or “life”) in Hebrew. While many of his colleagues were out on the tournament floor playing for the $50,000 HORSE bracelet, E-Fro was relaxing in the Full Tilt lounge.
Today is going to be a sick marathon. I get burnt at midnight. I’m pretty much toast by then, but I’ll just Red Bull it if I have to. I’m not used to playing long sessions anymore. Tournaments are hard for me because I am five- or six-hour session player. It’s difficult but if I have some chips and I’m still in it late the adrenaline will keep me going.
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of catching up with Lee Watkinson, the newest member of the Full Tilt team and its latest bracelet winner. When I spoke to him, he was standing in front of the cashier’s cage waiting for the $655,746 check he’d earned for winning the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event. Checks of such size aren’t produced quickly, allowing us plenty of time to talk.
I feel good although I started off kind of crummy. I went all the way down to $30,000 relatively quickly. Then I got on a rush in limit hold’em, which is funny because I really hate that game. And then in razz I won a couple nice hands.
