WSOP Diary: Day Two

I was awake before 6:00 AM. This is typical for me alone in Las Vegas. The last time I looked at a clock before going to bed, the time was after 1:00 AM. Just short of five hours of sleep: that's pretty good, considering.

I've added a tool to my bag of tricks since the last time I spent a week in Las Vegas. Upon realizing that I wasn't getting back to sleep any time soon, I got up and sat in meditation for half an hour, a home-brewed imitation of zazen. When the half-hour was up, I lay back in bed, hoping to have calmed my mind enough to get some more sleep.

It was restful, but it wasn't sleep. I got up for real at 7:30 AM and called home to touch base with Debbie, to nail down the final details of the plan for us to meet up in the evening. Then I dressed and went out.

I ate breakfast in the Horseshoe coffee shop once again. Afterwards, well after eight, I went to the satellite area.

Today's tournament was to be $1500 no-limit hold'em event. The satellites thus had $175 buy-ins, paying out $1500 in tournament entry lammers and $120 in cash, with the house taking $130 in juice. I was first to bust out of the first one, The second one had a tougher lineup, so I was able to hold out for fifth place.

I came out of the satellites feeling that my no-limit hold'em game was off: not that I was off my best game, but that my best game just wasn't all that good. I went outside and walked around the building while talking about it to Debbie. One way to look at this is that the feeling that my game is off and always has been is that this is a sign that things are about to get better. I hope so. The WSOP, though, isn't the place for improving one's game, but for putting an improved game into play.

I went back to my old standby, the eight-or-better stud game. There was a seat available in the must-move game. But tournament time was approaching, and it was going to be a sell-out. Shortly after I sat down, floorpeople came by to tell us that every poker table in the Horseshoe would be needed for the tournament. I clocked out of that game down a nominal couple of hundred dollars.

There was some talk, spearheaded by Karina Jett, about picking the game up and moving en masse across the street to the Golden Nugget. I made a few cracks to the effect of "No, how about the Plaza.... Say, maybe the El Cortez would treat us right!" (The Plaza's poker room is low-rent, and the El Cortez is the very bottom of the barrel.) At length, the game was broken, along with all the other cash games. The lines at the cage were long.

Andrew Prock had the very clever idea of walking around to the older side of the casino and using the other cage. There was only one person ahead of us in line there, so we beat the crowds.

At the Nugget, there were already a couple of names on an interest list for $50-$100 stud/8. Andrew and I put our names down, and we hung out in the poker area.

The Golden Nugget poker room is actually a tented-over portion of the hotel's swimming pool and sunbathing area, with ventilation for piped-in air conditioning. It is light and spacious, and there is plenty of space between the room's twenty tables. Ten of the tables are low-limit, nine are high-limit, and one, railed off from all the rest, had a $3000-$6000 limit mixed game, where Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, and others were playing. It's a comfortable environment to play, although the air conditioning only imperfectly overcomes the ambient outside temperature.

The chief drawback of the room is that is newly opened, and that the management had had to hire dealers at a time when everyone who is the slightest bit competent at pitching cards is taken on by the Horseshoe. What the Nugget wound up with was a crew of absolute beginners, most of whom were doing their best, but who were still climbing up the learning curve.

I talked for a while with Peter Secor, who was playing in a 4-8 hold'em game, then sat down in a new 1-5 spread-limit stud game, much to the amusement of the stud/8 players who saw me. "Hey, it's action," I said. I had dropped $13 by playing a bit too aggressively when they called down the stud/8 game.

The typical player of high-limit eight-or-better stud is a grumpy old man, somewhat unkempt, with a sour attitude towards the cards he is dealt and the outcome of the play of the hands. I look at the players of this, my favorite form of poker,and wonder, "Is that who I am going to be in twenty years? Could it be true that that is who I am now?" At any rate, these grumpy old men were hard on the inexperienced dealers. Karina Jett, who is neither grumpy, old, nor a man, took the role of table captain, explaining as cheerfully as she could manage how the dealer should be running the game. Some of the other players were rather less polite. I wound up feeling that I had to make a point of praising the dealers when they got things right and encouraging them (rather than berating them) when they didn't.

To make things worse, the game was a rock garden. There were no soft spots. The best thing that could be said about it is that I could tell that while this particular rock was made of granite, that one over there was sandstone. Andrew sat in the game when it started, but he picked up and left after a while. (Don't get me wrong; Andrew is not a soft player.)

I got stuck a few hundred dollars in the game, and decided to wait it out. In the middle of the afternoon, I got up from my seat to take a walk, to cross the street back to the Horseshoe. Enough tournament tables had broken that now some cash games were being spread, and that included the stud/8 game. I put my name on the list, then chatted for a while with Andrew about Andy Latto's bustout hand in the tournament.

I returned to the Nugget, intending to pick up my chips, and discovered that there were now some actual soft players in the game, so I sat down again and waited for the hands I needed to take some of their money; and as I waited, tough players were replaced, one at a time, with weaker ones. The game got better, and I got ahead.

One of the players got the attention of a floor person. She wrote out a buffet comp for him. I was surprised; I had thought that the Golden Nugget poker room would follow the lead of the Mirage and Bellagio, part of the same chain, both being notoriously stingy with comps. I caught her eye, and got a buffet comp too.

At 5:00 I realized I was hungry. Debbie was not likely to get downtown until 8:00 or later, and that would be too long to wait to eat. I picked up my chips and went to the Golden Nugget's buffet for my free meal. The buffet there is excellent, comparable in quality, if smaller, to the high-end buffets at Strip casinos.

I had the peculiar experience of listening while I ate to the woman at the table behind mine breaking up with her boyfriend on her cell phone. "Do me a favor," I heard her say. "Lose this number. Don't call me again. Have a nice life." I wanted to turn around and say something comforting; and at the same time I guessed that this woman wanted very much to be left alone.

After eating, I went back to the Horseshoe. I put myself on the list for the stud/8 game, but then went with Andrew to the satellite area. After just a minute of keeping us waiting in line, the satellite coordinators put together a stud/8 satellite (tomorrow's tournament is the $2000 stud/8 event).

I started well in the satellite, scooping a couple of pots to give me an early chip lead, which I retained for a while, until a player named Mickey, loose and aggressive, accumulated chips by being aggressive and getting lucky. When there were four players left, including Andrew with a short stack and me with an average one, I had a good high hand cracked by Mickey, who spiked a running pair of bricks when he hung in against my two-pair-plus-a-good-low-draw when he held two smaller pair. This crippled my stack, and I played survival for a while. Then Andrew, holding split queens, put me on a steal when I raised on third street with split aces, and reraised. One more reraise and I was all-in. Once all the cards were dealt, Andrew spiked a second pair, and I got no help. No blame, just the breaks breaking wrong. But it made me furious. I left the building to walk off my mood.

Then, back to the live game. I got into the must-move game and played for a while, dipping slightly down. Debbie arrived, and I left my chips on the table while I got her checked into the hotel.

Back in the game, things didn't go so well. I was moved to the main game, which was tougher, I knew where the soft spots were and was prepared to exploit them. The trouble was the cards were giving me bad breaks ... like the hand where my three aces were cracked by the other guy's two pair that spiked a three-outer on the river to fill up. His starting hand (that he raised with) was (8 8) 10 – a hand that I think of as being basically unplayable in stud/8.

Just after that hand, Andrew, who was also in the game at that point, pulled me aside and took me for another walk, telling me over and over again that the swings in stud/8 can be huge, and that my feeling of tossing a two-headed coin over and over again only to have it come up "tails" every time was not unusual. Also, he told me, aggressive players who play marginal or inferior hands aren't making as big a mistake as one might think, especially if they can read other players well. "It's not you," he kept telling me.

The pep talk did me some good. I returned to the game in a mood, but focused on the cards. The breaks started coming my way again, and I used them to good advantage – I'm proudest of scooping a pot when I called a river bet from an aggressive gambling player with a pair of fours and a busted low straight draw. I built the pot on the early streets when my equity was huge, and made the right move on the end.

The voice of Marci, the top section brush, was getting more and more hoarse as she called into the PA microphone as the evening wore on. I realized that I had some Fisherman's Friend throat lozenges in my belt pouch, so I sought her out and gave them to her, as my good deed for the night.

I had gotten down a thousand dollars at the worst in this game, but my good cards had gotten me even again. Andrew had been putting serious spin on my playing in tomorrow's event. He came in second place in the same event in 2002; I take his recommendation seriously. I haven't decided for certain to play in it, but I'm leaning towards it. And if I were to do it, I would need a good night's sleep.

I picked up not long after midnight, touched base with Debbie (who was playing $10-$20 Omaha/8), and returned to the room, to write up the day's events, and to get some sleep.