2008 World Series of Poker Diary — Day Three

Sunday started with a continuation of the pattern I had established: waking relatively early after a decent night's sleep, and spending the morning catching up on the Internet and writing up my doings of the previous day. I should not be surprised at how time-consuming regular writing can be, especially if there are pre- and post-production tasks that go with it. I do everything myself here at As I Please; I don't have a copy desk, photo editor, or production manager to take my copy and turn it into a blog post. Movable Type does a lot of the work, but there is plenty that I have to do myself to get the result you're reading here. Slowing the process down even more is the WiFi at the Extended StayAmerica, the connection to which is weak and intermittent. So between one thing and another, although I was up at 8:00 AM Sunday morning, I didn't get out of my room and on the walk across the Anvil of God to the Rio until 2:00 PM.

I had been feeling frustrated about my results of the previous days' play in cash games, down and up tiny amounts, and felt that changing up might help me. I went to the satellite area to see how I could do.

The brush was selling seats to a $1030 no-limit hold'em satellite, and I stepped right up and took one. The procedure here is that players first get a seating card from the brush who is promoting the satellites. Then one goes to the registration window to pay one's entry fee and get a two copies of the entry receipt. One shows one's WSOP player's card at the window. Then one goes to one's assigned table and seat, giving one of the receipts to the dealer, and showing the dealer both one's player's card and some sort of ID to confirm that one is who one says one is. (John Doe can't buy a seat and send a ringer like Sabyl Cohen or Bill Chen to play for him.)

The $1K satellite had a very slow structure: players started with T5,000 in chips (although the smallest denomination of chip is 25, so they might as well call it T200) and rounds at least twenty minutes long. I didn't adjust very well to the slow structure, and I was surprised at how long it took through the early rounds to bust the first player out. In my long-haired, long-bearded biker-hippie garb, I must have presented a startling contrast to the very clean-cut and well-dressed men who made up the rest of the table. I knew one of the players from past experience: Paul "Eskimo" Clark, looking surprisingly clean-cut and well-dressed. (I can remember when he presented himself as something like a biker-hippie at the poker table. Has age tamed him?)

Without trying to do so, I established for myself an image as a wild-loose player. I busted two players by making calls of their all-in raises that prompted astonished murmurs of "what a call!" when we turned our hands up. (I was in fact thinking of ranges of hands and whether or not my call was profitable against those players' ranges; but the effect was to make me look like a maniac.)

I died a maniac's death, though: I donked off most of my chips by continuation-bet bluffing a player who had the hand that I was representing. Then I was a small stack, and it was an easy matter for someone to eventually call one of my all-in bets and beat me.

Chastened, I moved down, to a $525 satelline with a more familiar, fast play structure: T2000 in chips and ten-minute rounds. The play here was completely different, comparable to what I would expect in a $10+$1 single-table sit-and-go tournament on an online site. No familiar faces here, although one of the players turned and started speaking in Vietnames to Jimmy Tran as Tran came walking by. I died the death when I got suited AK in early position and made a reasonable-sized raise and got two callers. Jimmy Tran's friend called in middle position, and so did the big blind. The flop came the very appealing K73 rainbow; I made my standard bet for that spot — a little less than half the pot, looking exactly like the c-bet I would be making if I missed. Jimmy Tran's friend called me, and the big blind dropped out. Turn was a relatively innocuous card that put a two-flush on the board. Again, I bet about half the pot. My opponent raised me, doubling my bet. Given stack sizes, to do anything here meant all my chips were going into the middle, so I reraised all-in, and he insta-called me, turning over 77 for a set. I had no outs; I was done with the satellite, in ninth place.

While in the satellite area, I saw some familiar faces. When I was buying into my first satellite, Alex Alaskar called to me. Alex is an old tournament nemesis of mine, and he currently is a dealer at the Palace in Hayward. I waved JP Massar over while I was in the $1K satellite, and we touched base. I also saw Roger Park, a San Francisco lawyer whom I first met years ago at a home game at Lee Jones's house and later became part of the circle of players that Dan Huseman calls "the Berkeley Mafia" (i.e. people on the ba-poker email list who played regularly in the Oaks Wednesday night or Sunday tournaments).

After dumping more than $1500 on satellites, I figured that I needed to change up again, so I returned to the cash-game section of the Amazon room. In the hallway I was hailed by Jerrod Ankenman, on his way to his seat in the $10K Limit Hold'em Championship.

There was no seat for me in the stud/8 game, so I put my name on other lists. The high-limit brush was promoting a mixed game about to start, a $100-$200 combination of badugi, Omaha/8, triple-draw deuce-to-seven lowball, and eight-or-better stud ("BOTE"). On a lark I put my name on the list, and the brush called for the game to get going in the high-limit pit. I bought chips, and waited for the game to start. But before it came together, I was called to the stud/8 game, and I decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

I didn't do so well in the stud/8 game. It was full of the same old familiar people (with one or two new faces) and there wasn't much weakness which a good player could take advantage. I fell behind. It was a forced-move game, and the main game was suddenly depopulated when a $660 stud/8 satellite was being promoted. The forced-move game broke, and the main game was stalled over a dispute over time collection. One of the players didn't want to pay time, giving an excuse that didn't make enough sense to me to hold water — I think she was looking for any reason she could find to not have to pay time. She wound up sitting out the rest of the dealer down, and not paying time for half an hour.

There were a couple of decently weak players in this game, once it filled up and got going again, but I wasn't able to do well against them for quite a while. It was particularly frustrating to trap a particularly live player for five bets each on sixth street when he was still drawing to a low and then having him outdraw me on the river. That's poker, but that was also a lot of bets lost in that hand.

Cyndy Violette came up to me at one point and asked me how the game was. "A bunch of tough spots," I answered, "and a couple of soft places. You can easily figure out which ones they are." (I found it a bit curious that she picked me to ask.) Eventually she did get in the game, and played through the night, still in it when I left in the morning.

I broke discipline and pulled an all-nighter. It turned out to be a good thing that I did, because the night-time and early morning game was had a lot more action in it, more loose players, players dropping in because they wanted to play something. The game had become one that had good prospects for me.

I went through a long cold stretch, hand after hand of folding, or seeing fourth street and folding. Playing hand after hand of poker has a rhythm to it that keeps one going. These cards suck. Fold. Wait for the next one. New hand. Fold. Wait. New hand. Fold. Wait. The old-time Texas road gamblers used to say that to be a successful poker pro you needed to have alligator blood in one's veins. I once thought that this was about being tough and mean and dangerous; but now I realize that the typical alligator spends its time in the swamp or bayou doing nothing in particular, just waiting for the right opportunity. To do well in poker, you have to wait.

So I waited and waited. And my opportunities came along at last. You couldn't tell what time of day it was in the Amazon Room, but outside it was growing light, and I was making money at last. I turned a loss of more than a rack of chips for the game into an even larger win, leaving my significantly up for the day. It was my first big score of this trip.

I cashed in my chips at 8:30 AM and returned to my hotel, only to discover that Lynn Kendall was up and getting dressed. "Let's go out for breakfast!" she said. The Las Vegas heat had been keeping her cooped up in the room, and the relative cool of the morning was her chance to get out. We drove to a Denny's and had a pleasant time together, although I could barely stay awake. By the time we had gotten back to the room it was 10:30 AM. I had to wind down and fall over, and I did.

2008 World Series of Poker Diary — Day Zero
2008 World Series of Poker Diary — Day One
2008 World Series of Poker Diary — Day Two
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 satellite eskimo clark cindy violette eight-or-better stud no-limit holdem nlhe

Posted by abostick at June 16, 2008 10:52 PM