June 15, 2008
2008 World Series of Poker Diary Day Two
/ 05.12.07 - 213/365: Poker Night Originally uploaded by d.rex. |
I was hungry again, and, on a whim, I crossed Valley View Drive to the Gold Coast to check out their Chinese restaurant, Ping Pang Pong. On Friday, one of the dealers, a young Chinese man, had recommended it.
The restaurant was full of Chinese families for Saturday dim sum. There was a wait for a table, but space to sit immediately at the counter. I opted for the counter.
The quality of the food was good, but I was disappointed by the service. It was difficult for me to get the attention of the servers as they wheeled the dim sum carts around. The quality of the food that I had was good, but the selection did not seem to be very wide. I think I would have been better off ordering off of the menu rather than eating dim sum. Three dishes plus tea came to $11 plus tip.
The noon event was a $1500 no-limit hold'em tournament, and was very popular. Many of the tables in the cash game section of the Amazon Room were given over to the tournament, and the stud/8 game was not yet going, although a few 2-5 and 5-10 NLHE games were going. I put my name on some lists, and wandered about the room looking at the tournament action. The only person whom I recognized at the tables was Greg Raymer.
An announcement boomed over the PA system: In three minutes the tournament players would go on break. All spectators should clear the room immediately. I made my way out, along with all the other spectators. Moments later, the doors of the Amazon Room vomited forth vast numbers of tournament players. There was no getting back inside until they all had left. It took a while for me to get back to the cash game area. When I did, they were just calling down a 2-5 NLHE game, and I got a seat.
When I had a chance to look, I saw that the board for the 50-100 stud/8 game was clear of names. I wondered about that, and had an intention to go check it out. Then I heard an announcement that there were available seats in the stud/8 game which had somehow gotten enough interest in the short time I had been out of the room to get going. I quickly locked up a seat, and picked up my chips (down $5) and moved to my game of choice.
It was not a great game. It was full of regulars, some of whom had exploitable weaknesses, but not big ones. One live player sat down in the #1 seat (I was in the #3 seat), but otherwise it was a battle between rocks of granite and rocks of sandstone. Some of the regulars left in dismay.
The place of one of them, to my immediate left, was taken by Cyndy Violette. Man, this game just keeps getting softer and softer ... (not). She was the winner of the $2K stud/8 tournament that I had played in 2004. She and I traded observations about how bad the table was. She is cute in a dirty blonde sort of way, but there was absolutely no chemistry between us, just the friendliness of poker-table rivals. After maybe an hour of play, a 75-150 Omaha/8 game got going, and she moved over there.
Thanks to the live player in seat one, I had worked my stack up half a buy-in; but I ran bad for a while just like the day before, I ran into a stretch where I couldn't win a showdown to save my life. I went from up two stacks of green chips to down a stack and a half.
Meanwhile, the 5:00 PM tournament had begun: $5000 pot-limit Omaha, with rebuys. I heard the announcement during the tournament's dinner break: 152 players took 483 rebuys to build a prize pool of more than three million dollars. The average player spent $20,000 to play in this event. With that being the average, you know that some players spent less ... and some players spent a lot more. "LOL donkaments..." indeed!
I found time among the various tournaments' dinner breaks to get food. I went to the sushi and noodle kitchen that is set up near the Brasilia Room. They offer all the Asian soup (e.g. Pho, wonton soup, pork and duck noodle soup, etc.) you can eat for $15, all the sushi you can eat for $29, or both for $38. The soup deal doesn't look like a good one to me, but $30 for all the sushi you can eat is a fair price. I went for the sushi. The selection is not great (for nigiri sushi you have a choice between tuna, salmon, yellowtail, mackerel, shrimp, crab, and eel; and you can get some rolls, including California roll) but the quality of the fish is good. It was easy for me to eat my money's worth. With hot green tea, my tab came to $34 plus tip.
I began at last to catch up with people I know. I saw Victor (vmacosta on 2+2) who is a regular in the Oaks' 30-60 game late at night. I got up from the table to chat briefly with him. Andrew Prock came to me at the table, and we talked for a bit. Sabyl Cohen called me and left a message just as I was cashing out. I called her back and caught up with her. She, alas, has come down with a chest cold and needs to take it easy for a while.
Towards the end of the session, a couple of good scoops brought me back up to even. I had been thinking about playing later (and shifting my time schedule later, to take advantage of evening and early morning loose games), but when the end of my eighth hour came around, I just didn't feel like playing more. I finished the session up $48 ($43 on the day). Down $59 one day, up $43 the next I don't know if I'm up for the drastic variance of high-stakes poker.
I made my way back to my hotel, and realized quite how tired I was. I sat with Lynn for a while, and then went to bed, while she stayed up writing.
2008 World Series of Poker Diary Day Zero
2008 World Series of Poker Diary Day One
2008 World Series of Poker Diary Day Three
2008 World Series of Poker Diary Day Four
2008 World Series of Poker Diary Day Five
2008 World Series of Poker Diary Day Six
2008 World Series of Poker Diary Day Seven
2008 World Series of Poker Diary Day Eight
2008 World Series of Poker Diary Days Nine and Ten
2008 World Series of Poker Diary Days Eleven and Twelve
Tags: poker wsop world series of poker las vegas trip report travelogue gold coast dim sum ping pang pong sushi eight-or-better stud cindy violette
Posted by abostick at June 15, 2008 12:52 PM
