Greg Raymer Wins the Big One

Congratulations to Greg "Fossilman" Raymer, who won the World Championship event at the World Series of Poker this evening, outlasting 2,575 other entrants in a seven-day poker marathon, and winning a record-breaking $5,000,000 prize.

This makes the second world champion whom I have known at least casually before his win. Chris Ferguson used to play on the old IRC poker server; and Greg has been an ongoing contributor to the Usenet newsgroup rec.gambling.poker and to the discussion forums on Two Plus Two. No dark horse, his reputation as a no-limit hold'em tournament player has been developing over the years.

Way to go, Greg!

Poker in the Washington Monthly

Doing my daily check of the blogs, looking at Kevin Drum's Political Animal, I saw in the sidebar that the Washington Monthly has a feature article about the poker boom: Jack of Smarts, by Justin Peters.

It's nothing special. Justin Peters, fresh out of college (perhaps a newly-minted J-school grad; his bio says he is "a writer in Washington, D.C.") breathlessly documents the growing popularity of the game:

These days poker – specifically Texas hold 'em, the best version of the venerable game – is enjoying an unexpected renaissance among Americans in general, and twenty-somethings in particular. It is newly ubiquitous on television: The World Series of Poker, a single event which took place last May, is replayed on ESPN with obsessive frequency 10 months after it ended. The World Poker Tour, another set of tournaments located in casinos around the country, got picked up by the Travel Channel last year. In the fall, Bravo introduced its heavily promoted "Celebrity Poker Showdown" program, betting on viewers being riveted by a fifth-street showdown between Timothy Busfield and Coolio. But perhaps anecdotal evidence speaks louder: Three years ago, when I was a sophomore at Cornell University, there wasn't a game to be had. By the time I graduated, I could choose from several different games every night of the week.

It's a familiar story: World Poker Tour blah blah blah online casinos yadda yadda Chris Moneymaker blah blah blah Rounders. ... Poker isn't just gambling, Peters tells us, it's a game of skill. He projects an image of jaded knowingness. At the same time, he boasts of having won $140 in a single game, and writes with amusement about the regular in his game who has lost "several hundred dollars" since he began playing. That's small potatoes, even by the standards of the Oaks' 2-4 stud game where I first made my bones in public cardroom poker.

Peters misses a fundamental point. Poker isn't a show of masculinity, it isn't merely a game of skill; it's a game of predation, of exploitation. The ur-skill of poker isn't tell-reading, or even using knowledge of the odds; it is game selection: finding a game that is weak enough that you can beat it and win the money.

Rounders, the World Poker Tour, and the growth of online casinos have all been very good to poker, by bringing in new generations of players ... who don't yet know how to play. Some of them will learn and become winners; others will lose and give up in frustration; but plenty of them, bless their hearts, will learn just enough to turn their personal losses from a flood to a trickle and spend the rest of their lives keeping the games afloat. I wonder which category will claim Justin Peters? I have a guess.

Game Licensing ... the Cart or the Horse?

Here is Anthony Lane reviewing the film Van Helsing in this week's New Yorker (the link will go bad within a week):

Indeed, you wonder what youthful viewers will get from this movie. Any reference to Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi will sail over their heads, and they will never know the loaded, entrancing silence in which those superior monsters advanced upon their prey. I suspect that they will regard “Van Helsing” as a low-budget trailer for the real business of the moment, which is “Van Helsing” the Xbox game, available now for $49.99. I have not yet had the pleasure of its company, but the promises made by the manufacturer are stirring to behold: “Unlock hidden content when you play through three different difficulty modes.” This has to be an improvement on the movie, which has virtually no content at all, hidden or otherwise, and whose only mode of difficulty arises when Hugh Jackman has to shout to make himself heard above the screech of the flight attendants.

Lane, like most critics, doesn't like the film (there are exceptions to this, like our own true Roz Kaveny). But that's rather beside the point he's making in this paragraph: that in his perception the film is the tie-in to the Xbox game, not the other way around.

Anyone who has any understanding of the economics of filmmaking, especially of SFX-laden summer blockbusters, knows this is hogwash. But isn't it interesting that Lane would think so, or at least would make a show of seeming to think so?

Burn, Baby, Burn

The Daily Kos has a delightfully gloating report on Bush's re-election campaign spending. Apparently, Junior is as irresponsible with campaign donations as he is with your tax dollars, and this will have a negative impact on spending on local Republican campaigns nationwide:

[A]ccording to OpenSecrets.org, Bush had raised a total $185 and had nearly $109 million cash on hand at the end of March. At the end of April, it was $200 million total raised, and $72 million cash. Check my math, but it looks like Bush spent $52 million in the month of April alone.

$72 million is about five weeks expenses at the April burn rate. ...

But here's the fun part – The GOP counted on having Bush fundraise for the party committees and individual candidates down the ticket. Instead, that money is being shovelled into the Bush vortex. The more Bush has to hoard for himself, the less money he can raise for our congressional foes. ...

Update: Kerry's numbers are out. Our guy raised $30 million to Bush's $15 million. And the article notes that Bush will have to raise $12.5 million a month through August to maintain his current burn rate (adding in his cash on hand). That's money that won't make their way into competitive House and Senate races. Nice.

It reminds me, in a way, of the morbid speculation about startup companies' expected lifespans based on their burn rates as the dot.boom's peak drew near. (Hmmmm. I wonder if the domain fuckedadministration.com is available?)

Costikyan on E3

Just in case you actually read As I Please for commentary on gaming (don't laugh – at least one blogger lists me in his blogroll under the category of "Games"), I want to point you to Greg Costikyan's writeup of E3, the electronic gaming conference that just took place in Los Angeles. In his trenchant style, Greg takes on the dominance of licensed material in electronic games:

Out on the entrance hall floor is some classic muscle car; hired bimbos stand in front of it wearing dangerously short cut-off jeans and halter tops. Above it is a banner for the game they're promoting; the Dukes of Hazzard, forsooth. Only in the game industry would such a shit license find a home. Are the suits morons, or are they just desperate? Why in god's name would anyone think a fucking Dukes of Hazzard game is likely to outsell something half-way original?

(To give the Devil his due, one BK tells Greg in the comments that the first Dukes of Hazzard game was a piece of crap that was developed on a shoestring ... and sold something like one and a half million copies through Wal-Mart.)

Greg describes and analyzes the new generation of handheld gaming platforms (N-Gage QD, Nintendo DS, and Sony PSP) and the Infinium Phantom home console platform. And in a subsequent post he links to Gamespot's interview with security analyst Michael Pachter. Pachter corroborates Greg Costikyan's view that the plethora of sequels and licensed properties in the electronic gaming world are a sign of trouble.

GameSpot: Four days after the trumpet call that closes down E3, what do you recall most from the show?

Michael Pachter: Sequels, sequels, and more sequels. People just aren't taking any risk on new intellectual property (IP). Obviously there are some new games but very few.

GS: Is that an advisable tack at this stage in the consoles' cycles?

MP: Apparently that's what all the publishers seem to think.

GS: But from a financial perspective, does it make sense?

MP: The question is, how are consumers going to react? If consumers are fine with a bunch of Rambo 4s or Star Wars 6s at the movies, then fine. But I feel there's a point where sequels wear off. I think you still need to introduce new content to get people excited. I'm afraid that the [software] companies are being a bit too conservative.

WSOP Diary: Day Seven

On Wednesday, I woke up at 7:30 AM, after four and a half hours of sleep. That was just barely enough for me to feel rested enough to play in the $1500 Seven-Card Stud High-Low Split event.

I had two $500 lammers in my pocket from satellites, so I put in just $500 cash to enter. Once again, Debbie bought a quarter of my action.

I got off to a better start than I had in the $2K event the previous Saturday. I was able to get my fare share of chips as time went along, maintaining an average-sized stack until well into the sixth round. The only player I knew at my first table was Max Stern, although the other players had clearly been around the block a few times.

Our table broke in the fifth round. Not long after that I blew off some chips by taking off a card on fourth street and catching just enough to keep me calling to the river, leaving me with about $3K in chips. That's where I stood at the dinner break. Seated to my right was Dutch Boyd, who had made the final table of the $10K main event last year, now playing a very short stack. (He had also sat to my right for a while in the middle stages of Saturday's event, also short stacked, and I had gotten to like him and respect his short-stack play.)

After dinner, the antes and betting limits started getting really big, so I was compelled to shift gears into survival mode – which entails some patience and some gambling. Dutch went out fairly quickly. I survived for another hour, well into the eighth round. Sooner or later, a short stack either doubles up a couple of times into safety or it goes broke. I went broke, when my pair of tens was outrun by Karina Jett's bring-in defense that paired a jack on fourth street. 37th place, out of a field of 213. (Karina put my chips to reasonably good use, making it into the money.)

Once again I walked away feeling good about my performance. I had visions of being able to reach the final table both times; and it's pretty clear to me that I could have reached either one of them, had some breaks broken my way. I belong in that field of players.

After phone calls with Debbie and with Lynn, it was time for me to take a break from poker. Tired though I was, though, I felt it was just too early to go to bed. Instead, I walked straight into the Vegas Zone.

I played some craps for a while at the Four Queens. Unfortunately none of the shooters could make a point to save their lives, and I dropped more cash than I would have liked. I sat at the bar in the Golden Nugget for a while, playing video poker for the free drinks. It certainly wasn't a full-pay machine, but I was lucky enough to spike four deuces playing Deuces Wild, so that made up for my craps loss. I walked up and down Fremont Street. I paid $8.75 each for two beers in The Girls of Glitter Gulch.

At 2:00 AM I took a walk through the Horseshoe, thinking that I should be going to bed. The stud/8 game was going, though, shorthanded. If there's one thing I love more than a stud/8 game, it's a short stud/8 game. I pulled out some money and announced that I was drunk, and that the other guys would eat me alive.

I actually went down $2000 fairly quickly, but I was playing a good game. It got shorter, and I began to get some of my own back. For about forty-five minutes I played head-up with a player named Kim, and scooped enough pots to get almost even.

Then the pot-limit Omaha game broke, and some of the players sat down. Kim and I took shameless advantage of them for a little while, before they began to ask to turn the game into a mixed game, half stud/8, half Omaha/8. I suck at Omaha, but an opportunity is an opportunity.

For a while I blew everything I would win in the stud/8 rounds in the succeeding Omaha. All my good starters got clobbered – my usual story at Omaha. Eventually, I scooped some nice pots, and got $1500 ahead in the game. I picked up at 7:15 AM, and returned to my room to get some sleep.

WSOP Diary: Day Six

I didn't sleep deeply, but I did sleep, becoming wakeful (with bits of dream images flashing and flirting with my consciousness, as if I were still in REM state) some time before 8:00 AM on Tuesday morning, making for about four and a half hours of sleep. As usual, it wasn't enough, but I wasn't going to get more.

I spent some time writing up my Monday experiences, then packed the PowerBook up and took it with me to the Four Queens coffee shop, where I wrote more as I ate. After breakfast, I went to the Horseshoe satellite area, where I played a $225 NLHE satellite and a $215 stud/8 satellite. I crashed and burned out of both of these.

I was feeling grumpy about busting out, and tired, so I returned to my hotel room to finish writing about Monday. The maid interrupted so see if the room was clear for cleaning. The second time, I packed up again and went downstairs to the coffee bar in the hotel lobby.

Writing took a long time, and I was tired. I had a 7:30 PM phone date with D. Potter scheduled. There wasn't enough time for me to me to go out to play cards, so I spent the remaining time in my room.

I sat for my daily half-hour of meditation. I don't think meditation is any kind of substitute for sleep, but the time spent sitting still with eyes closed and not thinking, or at least not dwelling on anything except my breath, is in fact restful.

I also spent some time on the phone touching base with Debbie and with Lynn.

At 8:15 PM, after my phone calls, I put myself together to go back into battle. I returned to the Horseshoe and sat down in a $2-and-$5-blinds no-limit hold'em game, blew off half my stack with semibluffs that got called and missed, then doubled up again when I had a real hand and the table was now convinced I was a bluffer, and then busted a player with a smaller stack when offsuit K-9 on the button in an unraised pot flopped a full house. When I was called over to the stud/8 game, I was up $170, having bought in for $500.

I played stud/8 for a while, and got up $300, but my mind was on satellites, and the lineup in the stud game wasn't encouraging. I picked up, and sat down in a $525 NLHE satellite. I blew off most of my chips because I was thinking like a cash-game player when an opponent bet big at me on the river and I had a bluff-stopping hand. I did my crowd-counting random number thing, came up with a number that said "call", and called him. The other guy showed me a full house. D'oh! I hung on for rather a while after that, but made the mistake of making a stand against a frequent loose raiser with K8 and getting overcalled by AQ. (My hand would have beat the loose raiser unimproved, who had suited 75, and an 8 did flop. But so did an ace. IGHN.)

I played a $225 NLHE satellite in which I simply didn't get any breaks, and went out early. I played another one, and this time I got cards. Three-handed, I was up against a cute redheaded woman who was dressing to show lots of skin and cleavage, presumably to mess with the heads of players who get distracted by skin and cleavage, and a loose-aggressive player who was a clone of Paul Suliin wearing a Gonzaga University sweatshirt and lots of bling-bling. After a few hands of play, our stacks were within a chip or two of exactly even, so we agreed to a one-chip save, and played for the remaining chip and cash.

Knowledge of head-up all-in equity helps. I was able to run over the other two, taking out first the Paul clone and then the redhead. Two chips plus $80 for me, taking the sting out of satellite play. I was now up in cash games and down just a little bit more in satellites, being down a net of $94 since I woke up.

I was hungry. It was almost 2:00 AM. I went to the Horseshoe coffee shop; it was closed! I went to the Four Queens coffee shop; it was closed, too! At length, I settled on the Plaza's coffee shop.

I was nearly finished with a grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich when Andrew Prock joined me. We spent a while talking stud/8 strategy and analysis, until my eyes began to cross. I said good night, and went upstairs to sleep. I was dismayed to see that the time was 3:05 AM when I got in. I was sleepy enough that I opted not to take melatonin, and I drifted off straight away.

WSOP Diary: Day Five

Just about at 8:30 AM, I looked at the clock and decided that I wasn't going to get any more sleep soon. I began to write up my experiences of Sunday. I realized that I was hungry, so I put myself together and brought my PowerBook down to the Plaza's coffee shop. I wrote while I ate my breakfast.

I saw a sign by the coffee shop cashier saying that the hotel lobby was a wireless hotspot. I decided to check it out after breakfast. I found that I got good signal, but the service was available if and only if one was willing to pay $8.95 per day of use. That's just not cost-effective compared to paying $0.75 per call to dial out using a 56K modem.

I returned to my room to finish my writeup. I got iTunes going, playing Steely Dan's The Royal Scam, music that is altogether too appropriate for Las Vegas. My hotel room window faces south, and I have an excellent view of the Strip casinos as well as the wider cityscape and the mountains in the distance. With the music playing as I wrote, it seemed that I could see the same cultural high-water mark on the mountainsides that Hunter Thompson claimed to see, looking out from his window in the Mint, now the east side of the Horseshoe, back in 1971.

(Aside to Thompson fans: fond though I am of tradition, and even though I have Surrealistic Pillow loaded into iTunes, I would never consider throwing my PowerBook into the bathtub, or even a grapefruit in its place, while it blared "White Rabbit" at full volume. I left all my adrenochrome at home, too. Melatonin just isn't the same.)

I finished the entry just after noon, so I dialed out to upload it to As I Please. I also brought iChat up, and found both Debbie and D. Potter online. I chatted with both of them while I cleaned up the latest round of comment spam from the blog.

When my online chores were completed, I disconnected, and got on the phone to talk some more to D. When I was done with her, I called Lynn Kendall. After taking care of my relationships, I sat in meditation for half an hour. Only then did I suit up to return to the fray at the Horseshoe. It was 2:30 PM. I might have gotten only five hours of sleep, but I had spent nearly twelve hours taking downtime.

I put my name on the list for the big stud/8 game. The brush was just calling down a no-limit hold'em game with $5 and $10 blinds, and saying that there were seats available. On a whim I decided to play while waiting for the stud/8 game. Only three people were actually seated. When I sat down, the dealer pitched the cards, and we played four-handed. At the table were Jimmy Chu Tran, whom I recognized from years of seeing him at WSOPs, although I had never before played with him, and an East Coast pro named Bobby. The identity of the fourth player didn't register with me. I bought in for $2000, enough to have some play, but the maximum I was willing to lose.

Jimmy Tran had always struck me, away from the table, as being mild-mannered and likeable. We had had a nodding acquaintance going for years. In a poker game, however, he is irritating, aggressive, impulsive, and loud – much the same sort of table image as Men Nguyen's.

We had a big confrontation when, after I raised the pot in early position with suited AQ, he called from the big blind. The flop was a very scary K-Q-10. Jimmy led into the pot with a big bet, and put me to the decision. I had no real read on him. I had no sense of whether his bluster represented a strong-means-weak bluff or a strong-means-strong trap. He's an experienced enough player, though, that he could be double- or triple-faking me, depending on how strong a player he thought I was; and at the table I was a complete unknown to him. He tossed the dealer a $5, saying "Give me two dollars back." This was a move, of course, but was it strong-means-weak or strong-means-strong?

I decided to put him to the test, and raised all-in. Now it was his turn to sweat. I made like a sphinx, and stared mutely at the chips in the middle of the table. Jimmy coffeehoused, presumably to try to elicit a tell. "Ace-Jack" he asked? I attended to my breathing, practicng zazen. Jimmy moved for his cards as if to fold. I attended to my breathing. Jimmy moved for his chips, as if to call. I attended to my breathing. Eventually, he waved a hand, saying "I call." I knew then I was beat.

"I think you got me," I said.

"You want to deal twice," he said, "for insurance?"

"Yes, let's do it." Dealing twice is a way that big-bet players often reduce variance in all-in confrontations, so that a draw gets a second chance (for half a pot) or a made hand can be protected somewhat against a draw's getting there.

The dealer put out a pair of turn and river cards. The second turn card was a queen. I showed my AQ; Jimmy showed offsuit KJ (representing top pair and an open-ended straight draw on the flop). My hand improved on one board, and his was good on the other. Offering to deal twice was a canny move on his part, because his was hand was such a huge favorite over mine. We split the pot, which should count as a bad beat for Jimmy.

In another hand, raised before the flop with pocket jacks, and Jimmy called me. The flop came queen-high. Jimmy checked, and I checked. The turn was a king, and Jimmy checked again. I checked after him. A small card fell on the river. Jimmy bet $150, which was about twice the pot. This time, I wasn't going to raise him. I had a hand good enough to call a bluff, and that's all. The question is, was he bluffing?

"What are you worried about?" Jimmy said. "I have nothing!"

The pot was laying me 3:2; I should be folding three times out of five in that spot. I needed a random-number generator real fast. There were a number of people along the rail, watching the game. I decided to count them, modulo five, and fold if the count was 0, 1, or 2. "What are you doing?" said Jimmy. "Praying?"

"Counting," I replied. There were fourteen spectators on the rail. "I call."

"I told you I had nothing," Jimmy said, and mucked his hand.

The other memorable hand from that game was one where I was just a spectator. Jimmy opened in early position with a raise. Bobby called on the button. The flop was the queen of clubs, the ten of spades and the five of clubs. Jimmy led into the pot, and Bobby called. A small club fell on the turn, making a flush possible. Jimmy checked, and Bobby checked after him. A red king fell on the river.

Jimmy bet the pot on the river. Bobby paused, and then raised all-in. Jimmy went into a huddle, counting his stack. Bobby had enough in his own stack to cover him. If Jimmy lost the hand, he would need to buy more chips. to keep playing.

Jimmy waited and waited. We all waited to see what would happen. "What are you going to do, Jimmy?" Bobby taunted. "It's call or fold, one of the two. Which is it?" Jimmy stalled some more.

"I've had enough of this," Bobby said. "I'm going to go play in the tournament." He stood up. "Dealer, push the pot to my seat when the hand is finished." He walked around the table to the entrance of the poker area, and around the rail into the crowd of spectators. "What are you going to do, Jimmy? I don't have time for this. I want to play in the tournament." It went on like this for several minutes.

At length, Jimmy surrendered his cards. Then, quickly, he reached for Bobby's cards, still on the table in front of Bobby's seat, and turned them over: pocket fives, the hand known as "Presto." Bobby had flopped a set, and had been trapping Jimmy.

Bobby erupted with rage. "What the f--- are you doing, Jimmy?" he said heatedly. "You didn't pay to see those cards! There's no f---ing way I'm going to show my hand if you don't pay to see it. You've got a read on me, and you didn't pay for it!..." And so on, while he walked back to the table.

Two floorpeople came to the table, and some security guards approached discreetly. Jimmy had in fact committed a serious breach of poker etiquette. But the fundamental rule of public cardroom poker is that a player is responsible for protecting his or her own hand; and Bobby was in fact away from his seat when the breach had taken place. "You're never going to do this again, right, Jimmy?" admonished the floorperson.

The immediate edge went from Bobby's anger, but he walked away from the game. Not long after that, I was called to my $50-$100 stud/8 seat. I was happy to take away $13 in profit from the no-limit hold'em game.

I did no real good in the stud/8 game. Soon into it I caught a series of strong starting hands, and I pushed them strongly ... and lost. I went through my $2000 buy-in fairly quickly, and put another thousand on the table. I slowly, painfully clawed my way back up, but only some. I was moved to the main game, which was tight, without much prospect for recouping my losses.

I took a break for dinner in the Horseshoe's buffet with Andrew Prock, who was in the game with me. We discussed our prospects and some fine points of stud/8 play while we ate, and then returned to the game. I stayed for one more dealer push after that, then got up, down $1600. It was about time I took a dive in that game.

On impulse, I drew a seat in a $125 NLHE satellite and sat down. I was fed up for the moment with eight-or-better stud, and figured I had a decent overlay here. It turned out to be one of those tables of weakies that makes satellite play at the WSOP so profitable – people more-or-less completely new to cardroom poker, lured in by tournaments on TV and the dream of big bucks. One of the players was a loud, obnoxious drunk. I let him bluff me out on the flop of a pot I had raised preflop, and bided my time. He didn't last long. None of them did, really.

I played like an implacable poker machine, while at the same time being genial, outgoing, talkative. I ordered a beer to drink while I played, and started to feel the buzz from it towards the end of the satellite.

I wound up head-up with the only other good player at the table. I had never The satellite paid two $500 lammers and $120 cash. With me having a 6:4 chip lead, I offered him a deal where I took the cash and covered the dealer toke. He turned me down. The next hand, I raised him and he called me, then bluffed me out of the pot. "See, I can outplay you."

"Hey, I did offer you an overlay."

"I'm not dead money, you know."

In my big blind I had a big ace, and I reraised his open-raise from the button. He surrendered, and said, "We're in the exact same chip position as when you offered that deal. You want it?" I agreed. I took the cash and a chip, giving me two profitable satellite finishes in a row. I toked the dealer $30.

I was wiped at that point, so I returned to my room to get some rest. I had some hopes of returning to the fray in the middle of the night, when players were tired, some drunk, with their noses open. I went to bed at 9:00 PM, with my phone alarm set for 12:30 AM.

I dozed, getting rest, if not actual sleep. I put myself together and went out once again.

I checked out the Golden Nugget poker room again (no real prospects) and then returned to the Horseshoe. I played in the $1-and-$2-blind NLHE game for a few minutes, then got into the stud/8 game. But it wasn't much better than before. I folded hands for a while, and jumped at the chance when Linda on the satellite side announced that there were seats left in a $525 NLHE satellite. They let you buy into the $525 satellites with lammers, and that's what I did.

No one was actually seated at the table when I drew my seat and paid, but when the game got started I discovered what a mistake I had made. Seven of the nine other players were experienced tournament pros, including Carlos Mortensen, Ron Stanley, and my friend Jimmy Tran.

The play was slow and tight. I got a run of amazing hands – aces three times, kings, AK, AQ, etc., and used them to take substantial pots down preflop and get comfortably ahead for a while. It took an hour of play before we lost our first player, a bracelet-wearer whom I did not recognize. In quick succession he had his aces all-in before the flop against pocket tens with a ten flopping, and AQ all-in against A-10 with a ten falling on the turn. He got up angry, complaining about the "bullshit dealers here."

"I can get really mad about, a beat," I said to the dealer, "but I never think it's the dealer's fault."

"It's got to be someone's fault," the dealer answered as he scrambled the cards for the next shuffle. "Whose fault is it if it isn't the dealer?"

"Why, it's Jimmy's fault, of course!" I pointed across the table to Jimmy Tran.

Jimmy promptly described our AQ-vs-KJ confrontation to the rest of the table, intending, no doubt, to rattle me and get me self-conscious and angry. He made a point of saying that the chips in my stack were his. (I had limp-reraised with aces in an early round, forcing him to lay down Presto.) Between us, we put on a show of trash-talking each other. Meanwhile, I was actually playing in implacable poker machine mode.

Not that this did any good at that table. I had my AK fall to KK, losing a third of my stack, and another quarter of what was left in a mis-timed steal attempt. After that, the blinds were big enough that any hand I would be playing was to be an all-in hand. Eventually I made a stand with a suited king, and got taken out by the player next to me, who reraised with AQ and flopped a queen. "I told you those weren't your chips!" I said to Jimmy. The player who took me out put his hand to shake mind. So did Jimmy across the table. I went around to shake it.

I felt good about my performance in that satellite, except perhaps for my atrocious game selection, so I went for another $525 satellite, using my other lammer. This time I looked at the game before I got into it, and it looked more like the beery fish-fest I would prefer to play in.

It exceeded my wildest expectations. In the second hand, six players (including me, holding 98) saw a flop of 6-5-4. The big blind bet out small, got called in three places (including me, willing to take off a card in hopes of hitting my gutshot and busting someone). Then, the player immediately after me put in a substantial raise, and got called by the player on the button. The big blind reraised all-in, and got called. I instantly folding, knowing that the action signaled that at least two of my four gutshot outs were in other players' hands. The player after me called, and so did the one on the button. The big blind turned out to have 73 for second-nut straight, the player to my left had pocket eights, the button had A7, and the first caller had 32, drawing completely dead. The big blind's hand held up, and three players walked away from the table, without a clue of just how terrible their calls had been.

The winner of that hand was seated close to the rail, and he was talking with his daughter as he played, pointing out the pros and big names as they walked by. "And I don't know Z.Z. Top over there," (pointing at me) "but I see him around every year, he knows what he's doing." I nodded and smiled in acknowledgment.

Again I played like the implacable poker machine that I was, and held my ground while everyone self-destructed around me, and wound up head-up with the man who started out so strongly with his straight. I trapped him into giving me a 3:1 chip lead, and then got him all in holding QJ against my A9. A queen flopped, and we were tied in chips. He offered an even split. Even though I felt I could outplay him, I figured the better part of valor was to take it. I had parlayed my two lammers into five! And counting the lammers as equivalent to cash, I was now
just about even for the day.

Andrew had been watching my finish. We went for a walk. I credited him for some ideas he had given me on Thursday that gave me something to work with to get over my feeling that my no-limit hold'em game was off. I was putting them to work, and they seem to be working.

It was 3:00 AM. Andy went back to play, and I returned to my room. Between one thing and another, I was awake until 5:00 AM, when the melatonin kicked in and I slipped into spacey, REM-y sleep.

WSOP Diary: Day Four

I checked the time shortly after I woke: 8:45 AM, eight hours after we had gone to bed. I had gotten a full night's sleep!

We got up and dressed, and put our stuff together for checking out. Debbie went out to play cards, while I remained behind in the room. I wrote up my diary entry for Saturday, sat zazen for half an hour, and did a final check of the room. I checked out of the room, then dragged my luggage the block and a half to the Plaza. It was close to noon. Rooms were not available, but I was able to check in at the front desk and leave my bags.

I went to the Four Queens' coffee shop for breakfast. I called Lynn Kendall and talked with her while waiting for my breakfast to be served. After eating, I went to the Horseshoe and caught up with Debbie. The time was 12:45 PM.

A second $50-$100 stud/8 table had just been started, and it had a seat waiting for me. Bonnie Damiano was at the table, wearing a ClassicPoker.com blazer. She was due to be interviewed by a crew from CBS News imminently, about online poker. "I'm going to tell them what's different about Classic Poker," she told us.

"What is different about Classic Poker?" I said.

"It's classier! The software is classier, the graphics look great, and players are going to be well-dressed."

"Does that mean," I asked, "that we won't be able to play online in our underwear?"

She explained that the dress code applied to the site's big live-tournament events.

A few minutes later, Nolan Dalla (working as WSOP media coordinator) came by and announced that the camera crew wanted to film our game, if nobody playing objected. No objections were raised. Not long after that, the crew came by, first for the interview (at the table, with her back to the game) with Bonnie, then to get our play on camera.

Apparently, CBS News is doing a feature story on poker on college campuses, and took advantage of the WSOP media circus to get some high-stakes play on tape for color. The crew shot a few hands of our play – I did nothing but fold on camera – and then the reporter did several of takes of her saying just one line: "College students play poker for fun and small stakes ... but in some games, the pots can get as large as they do ... here in Vegas."

At 3:00, I left my chips at my seat and sought Debbie out. We went to the Plaza and determined that my room was ready.

I was eager to get to the room, because it was my first opportunity to get online and upload my diary entries to As I Please. (For some reason, I couldn't dial up a data connection from the Nevada Hotel.) I was gratified to find your encouraging comments on my Day Zero post, and while there was comment spam to delete, it hadn't gotten out of hand.

I returned to the stud/8 game. The live players had been moved to the main game, and had been replaced by knowledgeable tough players. A third table had been going on for most of the afternoon, and some of the players in it were loose and aggressive. It was not a good situation to be in from a game-selection point of view. My best hope was to wait it out until I could get into the main game, hoping that the live ones were still playing.

Then came one of those hands: I was dealt split aces with a five for a kicker: one of the best starting hands in high-low stud. Andrew Prock, sitting just to my right in seat four, completed, showing a small heart in the door. I reraised, and got called in three places. Fourth street gave small suited connectors to both the player in seat one and to Andrew. I got the only card I could get that wouldn't slow me down: a third ace. I was high, I bet out again, and got called by seat one and by Andrew.

Fifth street brought small cards to everyone, with mine (a seven) being highest. I still had a shot at both halves of the pot, with my low equity more-or-less making up for the loss of high equity due to the dangerous upcards of my opponents. I bet out once again, and once again got two calls.

A queen on sixth street killed my low draw, and both seat one and Andrew caught third suited small cards. My hand was now in significant trouble, but after a moment's reflection I decided I was better off betting than checking – a raise from either spot would tell me what I needed to know, and either or both might still be drawing. I bet, and got two calls.

My river card was a completely useless eight. I checked, seat one checked, and Andrew bet. I made a crying call, and seat one called after me. Andrew showed a heart flush with no low. I showed my losing cards and mucked. Seat one, to my total astonishment, also mucked. What could he have had that would justify an overcall? Two pair?

That was just one of those beats that happen in stud/8. You can't even call it a bad beat, because everyone played correctly as far as I could tell (although I am astonished by seat one's river overcall). The trouble was, it left me stuck about $900, and the character of the game was such that I wasn't likely to recoup it any time soon.

After a few hands, I asked Andrew to take a walk with me, and we discussed the situation of the game. He concurred with me that the game sucked, and that picking up would probably be a good idea. When we got back, we played a few more hands, and he did just that. I decided to put my hopes on the main game, and stayed.

I also decided to shift gears, and play more loosely and aggressively, to try to take advantage of both the tightness of my opponents and the swings of variance. Much to my surprise and delight, it worked. It helped that the player in seat two, who had recently arrived from the second feeder game, was either more live than he seemed or had simply come unglued. In the space of a few hands he spewed off $2000, half of it into my stack. (I had had two small pair on fourth street with low kickers river a full house, and a complete steal with an ace up paired a brick kicker on fourth head-up against a mediocre low hand, making two pair on sixth and holding up against two smaller pair to scoop.) In a very short time, I went from down $900 to up $700.

I shifted gears again back to my normal tight-aggressive game, and bled about $200 in antes and third-street calls. At 5:30, I sought got a buffet comp from the floorman, then sought Debbie out to get together for dinner. I picked up from the game up $500, quite a victory considering how desperate my situation had been an hour before.

Debbie and I ate dinner in the buffet, then returned to my room in the Plaza for about an hour of cuddling and talk, which developed into some constructive relationship processing. I walked Debbie down to the street so she could catch a cab to the airport. She returned home, and I was alone in Las Vegas again.

I was feeling pretty tired, so I didn't return to poker. Instead, I spent some time in the room resting, then went out to Fremont Street.

I spent some time shopping for a new hat – I didn't find one – and stopped in at a new Walgreens, across the street from the Neonopolis mall, to buy some melatonin. (One way or another, I hope to get Las Vegas insomnia beaten into submission.)

Then I did what any good ol' boy would do to unwind after four days of strenuous poker. I walked into The Girls of Glitter Gulch to drink a couple of Coronas, watch nearly-naked women bump and grind on stage, and slip a few dollar bills into their thongs. Admission to the club is "free," but it comes with a two-drink minimum; and my two beers cost $17.50. Some people react to this like it was a scam, but it adds up to a reasonable price to pay for admission into a strip club. I knew the deal when I walked in, and it was fine by me.

After I finished my second Corona, I returned to the street. Now I was faced with a problem: I was tired and two beers to the wind; but the alcohol had also dulled the ache of my fatigue. I had entered the Vegas Zone. What was I to do?

I returned to the Plaza. First I checked out the craps pit, and discovered that the game that had used to have a $2 minimum with 10x odds was now a $5-minimum game with 3x-4x-5x odds. That changes the game from something where the house edge acts as rent for a fun party table to one where the rent is just too steep for the party. (The Four Queens has $5-minimum craps with 10x odds, but I wasn't in the mood to gamble that high.) I found the Plaza's single full-pay Deuces Wild video poker machine. I fed the game a $20 bill and played it out. This would be my first non-poker gambling of the trip. I was feeling a little more sober when I was done, but not ready for sleep. I was still in the Vegas Zone.

I went out again, this time to the Golden Nugget. I spent a while sitting at a table waiting for a $125 satellite to get down. I talked to Sam Angell, an old-time poker player with a bracelet from the early days of the WSOP. Eventually enough people gathered for the satellite to start. To my consternation, Mo, one of the regulars in the Lucky Chances $10-$10-$20 no-limit hold'em game, drew the seat to my immediate left. He was easily the best player at the table, and he had position on me.

Despite the alcohol, I played a good game, a better NLHE game than I had been playing. I made no mistakes, and died well in fourth place. (I was relieved when Mo busted out earlier, but I couldn't get anywhere after that.)

The Nugget was done spreading satellites for the night, so I crossed the street to the Horseshoe. Seats were being drawn for a $125 NLHE satellite, so I got one. Three of us sat twiddling our thumbs waiting for the game to fill. Linda, the night-shift satellite director, was busy running many games at once, and had not time to sell the game. I did my best in her place, without a microphone: "We still have seats in this $125 no-limit hold'em satellite, but they're going fast! Don't be shut out! ..." To my amazement, my pitching hit home, and the table suddenly filled rapidly.

One of the last seats to fill, two spots to my left, went to "Chris," a fairly generic-looking Young Poker Dude with a goatee, Titleist golf cap, and sunglasses. That's how I read him: like hundreds of other guys, probably knowing quite well what he's doing, maybe a bit full of himself, but dangerous anyway. It wasn't until the game was down to six players that I realized from other people's comments that Chris was in fact the reigning world champion, Chris Moneymaker.

I played rather less well in this satellite than the previous one. I made one seriously boneheaded play: I opened the betting with a reasonable-sized raise holding suited ace-queen. The player in seat 10, who showed every sign of being a real player who knew what he was doing, reraised the pot, but not quite enough to put me all-in. After it was folded to me, I said, "Okay, let's dance." and pushed my remaining chips in. Naturally, my opponent had AK, offsuit at least.

I got my dream flop of a queen and two clubs. The king of clubs fell on the turn, and the pot was mine. I doubled up by being stupid.

I made one other bonehead play: when the blinds were 50 and 100, I was still thinking they were 25 and 50. Holding a weak ace I opened for 200, which was actually the minimum raise. I got called in two places, and the flop missed me completely. The big blind bet out and I folded. I said to Chris, "That was the sort of raise where you just click the button without moving the slider.... I was hoping the big blind had clicked on 'auto-fold.'"

Chris chuckled, saying "They don't have that checkbox here. Some of these guys have clicked on 'auto-call.'"

That was the extent of my knowing, with-it conversation with the world champ. It was the only acknowledgment I made that I knew who he was, by making a reference to the PokerStars user interface.

I got aces cracked by going all-in against KQo before the flop. Naturally, two queens flopped, and my stack was crippled. But if you know the odds, it's easier to play a short stack than a big one, because you can just pick your spots to jam and pray. I chose well, and worked myself back up to an average stack. Chris Moneymaker went out in, as I recall, fifth place.

The player in seat one was a bozo. He build an early chip lead by taking AQ all-in against AK and sucking out – what a maroon! He called too much and didn't reraise enough. In effect, I had his number as a particular sort of weak player.

At the 100-200 level, three-handed, he opened the betting for 500. I had pocket aces in the big blind. Against a strong player, I would reraise. Here, however, I thought, is the perfect opportunity to trap with rockets. The flop came Q-7-7. I checked to him, and he moved in. I called, and AA beat AK handily. This put me into the chip lead with about 4500, almost half the chips in play.

The bozo suggested a three-way split. I said I had half the chips and wanted to play, and that was that. Not long afterwards, my pocket pair beat the third player's overcards, and it was head-up, with my having three quarters of the chips.

Bozo and I passed the blinds back and forth for a while. Then I got another pocket pair, sixes, and moved all-in. He called me with 87o, and flopped a pair and turned a second one. Now, with even stacks, he proposed an even split. I took it without hesitation. I thought I could outplay him, but I wasn't convinced of my ability to beat him at shooting dice.

Nonetheless, for $125, I got a $500 tournament lammer and $50 cash (we split the $20 dealer toke between us.)

Linda was setting up to spread another $125 satellite right away at this table. I was feeling wiped, though, and ready at last for bed. I returned to the Plaza, fed another $20 into the full-pay Deuces machine, ran it up to $40, cashed it out (now even for video poker play for the trip), and returned to my room. I took a melatonin pill, and read until I fell asleep, at about 3:15 AM.

WSOP Diary: Day Three

Friday night – actually Saturday morning – I stayed up until 2:00 AM writing up my experiences of the day, to the point where I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. I went to bed, and slept until 8:45 AM, more than six hours!

Debbie went out to play cards at the Horseshoe, while I sat in meditation for half an hour, then finished writing Friday up. At that point it was just after 10:00 AM – time to call Andrew Prock to see if he was up for breakfast.

I rendezvoused with Andrew and with Debbie at the coffee shop of the Four Queens. Andrew made his final pitch to me about the $2000 stud/8 event, and I decided on the spot to do it. Debbie took me aside after breakfast and gave me her own pep talk, and bought a quarter of my action.

I was surprised that I could find no one at the top of the escalator by the tournament area with tournament entry lammers to sell. It was with some chagrin that I paid cash for my entry – the past two times I've played WSOP tournaments, it has been with lammers won in satellites, clearly and obviously the fruit of victory.

The only person whose name I recognized at my table when it started was John Hennegan in seat eight. Most of the others, though, clearly knew each other, part of the tournament circuit. The woman who sat in seat one, though, was wearing a bracelet she had won at the World Poker Open in Tunica. Seat three was unoccupied at the start.

The tournament had 225 players, each with a stack of $2000 in tournament chips in front of them. I got off to a slow start, playing tight and not getting anything to play with. The first level was 30-60, with ante of 5 and bring-in of 10. Antes, bring-ins, and hands surrendered on fourth street when I caught bricks all chipped away at my stack. I was surprised at the level of play; most of the other players, even the ones whom I thought were clearly experienced at stud/8, pushed their hands past fourth street after catching bricks. If this table had been a money game, I would have been thrilled.

About halfway into the first round the occupant of the empty seat arrived: Chris Ferguson. "Just the person we wanted to see here," I quipped. Debbie would be happy, I thought. To her taste, Chris is just about the best-looking man in poker.

Eventually I caught a hand that went somewhere and split a pot and took down another pot on fifth street, bringing me to more chips than I had started with. The wind never really took my sails, though. Halfway into the third round, when all the tournament action was halted so that players could watch (and put bets on) the Kentucky Derby, I had only $1900 in my stack.

(The wind never took Chris Ferguson's sails, either. He got some bad breaks, and busted out before the second break.)

As the antes and betting limits increased, as I leaked more chips over time, I had to loosen up and gamble more. Doing so got my stack up to over $3000, but by that time it was the fifth round, the 150-300 level. The bleed brought it down again, and then I took a hand to the river against the woman in seat one. My two pair and busted low draw did not hold up against her flush and low. I was left with a very short stack, with the antes eating proportionately huge chunks of it very fast. I was not hands even good enough to gamble with, though, until I had but one $100 chip more than the $50 ante.

"I wonder what's going to happen this hand?" I said to the table, holding my single chip up. "Something interesting, I think!" Obviously, I was in a situation where I would be playing any hand I was dealt. Lightning struck: I was dealt split aces with a suited five. The player to my right raised the bring-in, I called all-in, another player called, and a third one, short-stacked, reraised, getting a call from the original raiser. The other short-stack went all-in for three bets on fourth street, leaving the other two players head-up for a second side pot.

When the dust settled, the final side pot was scooped by two small pair, the all-in player took the more substantial second pot with a better two pair. My split aces had improved to aces and jacks, so I scooped the main pot, all $850.

My situation had improved from hopeless to desperate. I went all-in for three bets with two small cards with an ace against three other players; I made the best low, and doubled up.

I continued to play the desperate short-stack game, and was astonished at how well it worked. I have a decent-but-not-perfect sense of the all-in equity of stud/8 starting hands, and was able to pick my spots well. I got lucky, too, of course, but I also knew what I was doing. Amazingly, I survived to the dinner break with a stack of about $1800 (going all-in and winning half a pot in the very last hand of the sixth round).

I was really keyed up during dinner, during which I sat with Andrew (who had a more respectable stack of $8200 at that point) and Debbie. We talked about my situation, and Andrew coached me some of the fine points of short-stack play.

I didn't expect to survive the seventh round, but I did. Finally, in the eighth round, my luck ran out, when I committed my stack of $800 (at the $400-$800 level) to a pair of queens that didn't improve, to be beaten in two places by two pair, taking 62nd place out of a field of 225.

I left the tournament area feeling really proud of myself, having been able to nurse a tiny stack through three hour-long rounds of increasing antes and betting limits. I'm sure now that I have an overlay against this field of players. This isn't to say that I'm the best player around; but that I'm good enough, I believe, to have a creditable shot of making money.

I took a break after busting out, spending some time walking around the building and talking with Debbie, and then talking on the phone with Lynn Kendall. Afterwards, I came back to the cash games and got into what now seems to be my standby, the $50-$100 stud/8 game. I didn't get very far at the second must-move table, but in the first must-move table I was able to take significant advantage of some seriously weak players and make some good reads. While I was playing in the cash game, Debbie played in the late-night Second Chance tournament. I checked in with her at the first break, and then was feeling ready to cash out, up $900, when she came to me at my table, having just busted out, shortly after midnight.

The good money news is that even after the $2000 outlay for the tournament, I am cash-even for the trip so far. This bodes well for the rest of the week.

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.

WSOP Diary: Day One

Travel to Las Vegas was almost completely painless. Debbie drove me to the Oakland airport, getting me there at 7:35 AM for an 8:55 AM flight. The line to check luggage was fairly brief. Although I was in the second boarding group (note to self: from now on, always use Southwest's Internet boarding document feature), I got a good seat, near the front of the plane. Peter "Foldem" Secor was also on the plane.

The flight was uneventful. I had a window seat, on the starboard side of the plane, and I had an excellent view of the changing California landscape from the coast through the Central Valley and the Sierras to the Owens Valley, and on to Nevada. I got a good view of Caltech's Owens Valley Radio Observatory.

Land, get baggage, wait in long line for cab, go downtown to my hotel: the Nevada, on Main Street, a block and a half south of Fremont. It's a low-end hotel, but not the dive I feared it might be.

After checking in at the hotel, I walked to the Horseshoe. Tournament registration is upstairs, outside Benny's Bullpen (the old bingo hall) where it has been for the past few years. There are two new wrinkles: Players need to fill out a release for the television coverage; and instead of getting a slot-club-style card, players get a badge on a lanyard, like a trade show badge. I've seen a number of players wearing these, but there's no real need to do so. I've been carrying mine in a pocket.

Benny's Bullpen is where tournament play is taking place. On the ground floor, the back end of the old Mint side of the 'Shoe is taken up by single-table satellites and low-limit games. The poker room itself is devoted to top-section games. The race and sports book is taken up by tables, also, devoted to $50 two-stage tournaments.

The poker areas are all hopping and happening; the rest of the casino seems placid by comparison.

I had lunch in the coffee shop, then returned to the poker room. They had just started a must-move $50-$100 eight-or-better seven-card stud game – a feeder game into another game that fed into the main game. The second must-move game got short, however. The players wanted to bump up the limit to $75-$150. I decided that this was just a little bit too high for me, and opted to move to the first must-move game instead.

I wound up spending eleven hours in the game, being moved to the main game while I was away getting dinner (again in the coffee shop).

During another break, I walked across the street to check out the Golden Nugget's new poker room. It turns out to be way in the back of the Nugget, past the pool area. It is a sizeable room. I didn't count them, but I estimate between twenty and thirty tables. I saw lots of low-limit games, and a number of top-section games, from $10-$20 to $50-$100 hold'em, as well as a pot-limit hold'em game (I didn't see what the blinds were).

I wound up booking a $1400 win in the stud/8 game. It was a good game, and I think I could have done better than that. I then discovered that walking a block and a half down Main Street at midnight was a lot scarier than it was at noon.