Subject: JG's 2001 WSOP Trip Report From: Jim Geary Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 21:16:44 -0400 Newsgroups: rec.gambling.poker -Friday Drove up Friday morning with Patri who had been visiting my house the week prior. When we checked in to our room, I thought of the line from the song Spanish Bombs: "bullet holes in the cemetery walls.." Drawing our threadbare curtains at night against the neon sky was like getting a free planetarium show, but without the Floyd. After checking in, I try to get a box for the week for my cash, and have to go through 37 different departments and show each of them a the brick to get approval. (Note to self: people seem to have an ingrained bias against dorky guys in tanktops with barbeque sauce stains; figure out how to parlay this into EV.) Rest for a bit, and in the evening play in a good 50-100 holdem game. Beat the snot out of it. Good trip so far. -Saturday Saturday morning I head over to the Mirage for the TARGET tournament which stands for "The only game in town if you're not going to play the opening $2000 LHE tournament because you have some notion of the appropriate bankroll requirements for tournaments with 600 or so people." I play decently, but get sucked out about 3 hands in a row and am history. Lose last longer bet with Abdul who didn't even show up. I drive back to Binion's with a stop at Gamblers World. Pick up a couple odd books as gifts, and go back to nap for awhile for the night's action. Conventional wisdom was the increased vig, the barrings, the 3% controversy, the tanking NASDAQ would all lead to a less popular Series. Well, that wasn't so at all. Saturday night the place was packed. My name was fifty or so down on every list. A quick call to Bellagio reveals three 80-160s with 100 names on the list. The only hope I saw of getting any action was the line for one-table satellites. Rather than take names, the satellite floorman, whose name I believe is Christoff(not the conceptual artist), had people line up against a wall. This seemed like a bad idea to me, but I had nothing better to do while waiting for 137 people to go bust ahead of me on the PLO list, so dutifully I stood. I was in line right behind OK Johnny. I had hoped to get a seat next to him in the satellite and then hector him about the claims in his book that FDR knew a priori of the bombing of Pearl Harbor when the historical record is quite unambiguous about this. Anyway, I wait and wait. As expected, I actually fall back in order as players seem to mill near the front. I wait for about one hour and finally, a table opens up and above-named floorman(Christoff) goes down the line handing out playing cards ranked ace to ten to the players against the wall. But instead of making any effort at distributing them fairly, he walks around looking at the players like he is the goddamned doorman at Studio 54 anointing us with his blessing. As he ambles back and forth, a well-known-name-player walks up (he hadn't been in the area at all for the previous hour, of this I am morally certain), says something to Christoff, and gets the magic tenth card. Meanwhile, the guy behind me who had been there 50 minutes is SOL. When we sit at the table, WKNP tips Christoff $5. I don't blame WKNP, really. He's a nice guy and just happens to know how the game is played whereas the guy behind me in line did not (actually I didn't either til then at least as far as the details of the protocol, but I'm enough of a dick that I would've given him at least $6 worth of grief). But now I share this secret with rgp so that you too can skip the lines and juice Christoff $5 if you think that that is worth an hour of your time. Of course, once word gets out the market price may go up (no need to thank me, Christoff), but who wouldn't want to play in a satellite with players willing to pay extra juice just to play with them? Once again, that's Christoff, $5. I win a little playing satellites, but never get into a live game. I'd not hear my name for an hour and then magically get called right after I had started a one-table. I decided I didn't want to play too late as I already had planned on playing the morrow's tourney. -Sunday Sunday morning I wake up and go for walk around downtown for a bit and head to the Omaha tournament with great expectations. My opening table completely sucked though. Phil Hellmuth, Max Stern & Jennifer Harmon were the name players thereat, but the non-names were all very good players as well. Not one bad player. I had hoped for three or four not unreasonably. So I'm forced to tough it out from the starting gun. Phil was sporting a cap for his new venture, ultimabet.com or something like that. At one point he was talking about his recent trip to Italy and all the nice shops for a clothes horse to indulge, and I can't help myself and say, "Is that where you got that snappy little cap?" He looks at me and smiles, but I know he's thinking "wtf is this guy to be needling me?" Still I think he has a good sense of humor. I was curious to see if any of the name players tried running over the table, but mostly everybody played it pretty close to the vest. Phil probably played a little loose, but I think he has a decent feel for where he was after the flop. On one hand, Phil picked up a pot from the small blind on the turn and said "I matched everyone of those(referring to the board) cards." The board was something like 86Q8. I can't help myself and say, "What possible fourth card on earth motivated you to throw in that extra chip to complete the blind?" He just smiles, quickly glances at the board, and says "it was a loose call." After that, every time he played his small blind he'd look at me and say "you wouldn't play this hand." The one time I think I did play my small blind I threw in the one chip and chirped "a Phil call." Of course I was holding something like AAJT double suited, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do, right? Anyway I never do anything spectacular and trade chips for a while. I think we only lost one player in the first four hours, so every stack was a little bit short. Eventually, I got myself into two race situations which I lost, and I was out. I went up to my room to rest, and after dinner came back down and played some pot-limit holdem, but didn't really do much either way. David Sklansky, who will never win a medal for sitting in his chair for any long period of time, keeps bouncing over from the next game with little math and word quizzes for me, eagerly phoning his father after every new quiz with an update. I don't think Mason is keeping him intellectually challenged or something. Eventually Howard Lederer walks into the room and David gets this great idea of having me hustle Howard at Scrabble. Surprisingly, Howard didn't get to be one of the biggest gamblers in the world by jumping at every sucker prop bet that comes his way. This probably would've been a good time for the T-shirt with the barbeque sauce stains, but no bite. -Monday After spending three days in poker isolation, I took the early part of the day off and walked around Las Vegas for a few hours. I got back just as the 4:00 super was starting. I looked up and down the buy-in line and didn't see one fish, so I passed. Went upstairs and got into a 50-100 holdem game. Eventually, the game degenerates into all pros waiting for fish to show up while me and Greg Raymer consider battling headsup. All the other lists were unappealing, so I said, "hey let's make this a HORSE game," and everybody thought it was a good idea. It was a good idea. Game went from dead rockfest, to let's gambool. These guys could all play holdem, but there were a few leaks in the other disciplines. End up booking a nice winner. Sometime around 1 a.m., the floorman went out for sandwiches from the deli. I hadn't eaten anything in 13 hours so I got turkey and cheese. Apparently this was a big mistake. I ended up violently ill in my room all night. -Tuesday I was up for a few hours, but completely wiped out. The smoke from the side games had taken its toll and the turkey sandwich was a wrecking ball. I played a little bit of pot-limit omaha out of sheer momentum, but I was in a daze as I played. Patri was in the game or railbirding, I forget which, and noticed this and said, "we gotta get you out of here." I tried getting something mild at the Nugget, but I still wasn't feeling well. Went back to my room and alternated sleeping and being ill. A day to forget. -Wednesday After going to bed at 7pm due to illness, I awoke at 3am feeling completely new. I went downstairs hoping to find zombi-filled satellites or stuck players playing PLO. But there really wasn't much going on. I sat in one satellite and played slow and steady to chop it. Then just about everything went dead. I put my name on the only limit game going, a 50-100 8 or better stud, and went to get some breakfast in the cafe. Breakfast was uneventful, but I'm still scared of sausage patties served medium rare. Call me crazy; I just don't care for my pork pink. Came back in and eventually got in the stud game, got up a little but then didn't win a pot for hours. Left stuck some. Saw that the one table satellites had picked up again. Played two, busting out of one and taking 2/3 the other. Decided that I was still alert enough despite having been up since three to have a go at the Omaha(high) tournament that day. Bought in a little after noon and hurried to my table to find it .. empty! Dealer won't even deal until two other players sit down. That happens quickly and for a bit, 6 of my seats are empty including the three to my immediate left. Across the table are Kathy Liebert and some veteran player from the East Coast whom I've seen a lot but whose name I don't know. The blinds are 25-25 and we're playing 25-50, so not only are the blinds substantial compared to the limit, there's a huge overlay from the tardy players. But these two players didn't want to gamble! They just wanted to fold and get as many hands in as possible to take down the unattended blinds. It's kinda like the prisoner's dilemma I thought. If I go along we get a nice little overlay, but if I deviate while they stick to that strategy, I can have a field day. So, I abused just about every pot (while trying to make it look like I wasn't abusing, heh). The one time they got involved, I showed down nut boat and I was off to more abuse. Fifteen minutes after the tournament started, I had run my stack up from 1500 to 2500. Eventually, Sklansky (who is at the next table over and sees what is happening) comes over and remarks, "you might have an easy go of it now, but I bet you're not going to be happy when the next three players sit down." From his lips to God's ear. Shortly thereafter Jesus, Daniel Negreanu and David Chiu fill the three seats to my left. Jim Miller then sits on my right and the two far seats get filled by some tough gamblers from Europe with whom I'd played PLO in the past. Once again another completely sucky starting table. Good thing I got the chips when I did. One hand of note: David & Daniel are in the blinds and I come in first from the cutoff with a raise holding QQ55(stealing? you think?) double suited. Daniel folds; David calls. Flop is 224. David bets; I raise. Turn is another 4. Check, I bet, he calls. River is a 5! He checks, I bet, he thinks and thinks. At some point he reveals and A4 in his hand and folds! I think he had a 3 as well! Either an unbelievable read, or just plain unbelievable. David and Daniel went into spew mode though and both were out like that. A half hour later David was playing Archie Karras 1-2 Razz (1-2 thousand that is), so I think he was okay with me abusing his blind in the omaha tourney. About this time Sklansky decides to try and throw Chris and I off our games by bouncing over and giving us logic puzzles(composite number distribution, game-theory optimal chicken, etc) when he isn't in a hand. Never mind if we were. It must've worked, as we busted out and he made it to the final table. I only regret Barbara Yoon wasn't at the final table shouting "King-ten s00ted!" at him in return. I didn't catch many hands for a while, and when I did get involved, came out the worse for it. Once again, I ended up getting knocked out around 5pm. Soon as the tournament was over, I spied a juicy 50-100 Holdem game with three live ones. Not ten minutes later the live ones get up and are replaced by me, then Tony Ma and then Berry Johnston. Aiyah. That didn't work out. So I pick up on my next blind and hit an eight-or-better satellite on the next table over. Lucky me, I get a seat assigned next to some bimboey blonde(too much lipstick, not enough education, nipples pronouncedly protuberating) holding a cigarette four inches from my face the entire time. I spent every hand getting up from my chair, only to have the security card tell me I couldn't stand where I was standing so they could keep the aisle open for the cocktail waitresses and I had to sit back down. Hm. She wheeled me at the second level and I was actually happy to be done with her and it. As I got up from the table, I just said fuckit. Sick of the smoke, sick of being sick, sick of the rules governing everything but smoking, sick of the politics of playing there, sick of the loud brush mike but no headphones allowed, sick of everything. And I went up to my room and packed. Next morning I was gone. A few thousand richer. Spiritually poorer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jim Geary | "They that can give up essential liberty to jimgeary.com | purchase a little temporary safety, deserve something to bore everyone | neither liberty nor safety." -- B Franklin ------------------------------------------------------------------------