2009 WSOP, Day 19: The Meisner Technique

Date: Mon, Jun 15, 2009 Internet

Probably the easiest of the 14 days I have worked thus far at the World Series of Poker yesterday, for a couple of reasons. One, the final day of Event No. 26 ($1,500 Limit Hold’em) only lasted into the sixth scheduled one-hour level of play, which means with breaks it was only about an eight-hour day -- by far the shortest I’ve had this summer. Also, I was teamed with Change100, whose experience at these things helps make everything easier for those working alongside her.

We went from 15 players to six in less than two levels, as the stakes had risen to the point where all of the short stacks really only had one big hand left in them. When we got to three players (Al Barbieri, Tomas Alenius, and Jason Tam), each had about the same amount of chips (around 900,000). With limits of 30,000/60,000, that meant each had about 15 big bets, which was the highest that average had been since Level 2, I think. Took a little while, then, for Barbieri to go out in third. After that it was probably 50-60 hands or so before Tam was finally eliminated in second. Had a big full house-over-flush hand there near the end that helped Alenius to victory.

I was writing yesterday about how even though this event had evolved into something of a card-catching contest, there was still a great deal of skill involved, as players had to make correct decisions over and over again, hand after hand. Surely it helped that Alenius caught some cards right at the end like that, but he’d successfully negotiated his way through something like 1,100-1,200 hands or so (I’d estimate) before getting there.

And after he got there, I got outta there, well before midnight for a change.

I have wheels here for my stay, though generally the only time I spend in the rental car is driving to and from the Rio. There’s a CD player in the car, but I have no discs, and so I’ve been listening to the radio during these quick trips. Such gawd-awful stuff up and down the dial, really. (Who else is sick of that Vocoder effect on every other pop song?) More often than not I end up listening to the NPR station where I heard an interesting interview a couple of days ago with the actor Sam Rockwell. He was talking about his experience filming this new movie called Moon that has just gone into limited release this week.

The movie is directed by Duncan Jones (a.k.a. Zowie Bowie, son of David). Sounds like an interesting flick, for sure, in which Rockwell plays a mine technician working on the moon in isolation, with a robot his only companion. Not entirely sure how the story goes, but I think Rockwell’s character is alone for most of the film, and Rockwell himself the only actor on screen for much of it. Rockwell’s character ends up suffering from some mental difficulties, and there are scenes in which he is alone but hallucinating (I think?), and appears to be interacting with others -- including himself.

In the interview, Rockwell talks about the challenge of the shoot, which was itself very isolating. In particular, he struggled with the scenes in which he was playing opposite himself -- scenes that had to be shot in sequence using the “green screen.” The big problem faced by Rockwell in those scenes was the fact that he had been trained in the Meisner technique -- a kind of acting that is primarily based on reacting to others’ behaviors, something that wasn’t really possible for Rockwell when shooting these scenes.

I asked Change about the Meisner technique a little bit yesterday. I knew she’d know more about it than I did, given her Hollyweird background. Is derived from Stanislavski and the whole “method acting” movement that has had such a profound influence on cinema over the last century. Named after the American Sanford Meisner (pictured).

When covering this last event, I was thinking a lot about this Meisner technique by which an actor primarily responds to others’ cues. Just observing a tableful of players, one can readily see that some of the players seem to be responding more to their opponents’ behaviors and actions than others. In fact, I’m starting to become more and more convinced that this may well be the most valuable skill in poker -- that is, being able to fashion one’s own “acting” according to how others are performing their “roles” -- and that generally the game’s elite is primarily made up of players who’ve been able to master that very skill.

Maybe it’s just another way of stating an obvious truth about poker -- that being able to read one’s opponents is of foremost importance, and one’s own “style” necessarily must be shaped according to the styles of the players one is up against. I think it’s interesting, and maybe even helpful, to consider this activity as a kind of “method acting” which requires (and can be improved by) conscious, thorough training.

A lot easier said than done, though.

Am off today, then back on tomorrow to cover another of those big field, $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em events, Event No. 34. (Wow, are we up to 34 already?) To follow today’s action, including the finale of that World Championship Heads Up No-Limit Hold’em (Event No. 29), go over to PokerNews’ live reporting page for all the skinny.

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2009 WSOP, Day 18: Poker Is a Skill Game

Date: Sun, Jun 14, 2009 Internet

Phil Ivey has passed through some of the five World Series of Poker events I have helped cover thus far this summer at PokerNews. He did make a relatively deep run in one of them, finishing 18th in Event No. 13, the $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em, but that’s the farthest I’ve seen him go. So I haven’t been able to watch first-hand his most obvious successes at this summer’s Series.

Last night Ivey claimed his second bracelet of the 2009 WSOP, winning Event No. 25, the $2,500 Omaha/Seven-Card Stud Hi/Lo after earlier winning Event No. 8, the $2,500 No-Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball. That makes seven WSOP bracelets altogether for Ivey, all in non-hold’em games.

Ivey bested a field of 376 to win the event last night, including a number of tough competitors like Ming Lee (whom he beat heads up), Carlos Mortensen, Dutch Boyd, Jon “PearlJammer” Tuner, Steve Wong, Blair Rodman, Chad Brown, Raymond Davis, Gavin Smith, Chau Giang, Hoyt Corkins, and the Black Widow of Poker herself, CK, who finished 39th in Event No. 25. (Way to go, CK!)

There were 147 entered into Event No. 8, which also included some very tough opponents like John Monnette (who fought Ivey well heads up), Yan Chen, Eric Kesselman, Layne Flack, Tony G, David Grey, Freddy Deeb, Vanessa Rousso, Barry Greenstein, Erick Lindgren, and Archie Karas.

That’s just mentioning the names of some of those who cashed in these two events -- there were a number of top level players (Alaie, Seidel, Juanda, Matusow, Lisandro, Mizrachi, Mercier, Clements, etc.) who played in these events but didn't make the money.

Some react with seeming astonishment, their jaws dropping at the news that Ivey has won two bracelets already this summer, and that now two players (Ivey and Brock Parker) have achieved the feat of winning multiple bracelets in a single Series. But it shouldn’t be that amazing. While there is certainly always going to be an element of chance, no matter which game we’re talking about, poker is a skill game. And Ivey has mad skills.

What I heard from those who watched Ivey’s final table last night was an overwhelming sense that once he managed to get off the short stack and get a few chips, it seemed inevitable that he’d eventually win, strictly because of how well he was able to control the action.

Had a similar feeling the other night when I watched Brock Parker win his second bracelet, especially once it had gotten to heads up. Like watching a basketball game with ten players on the court, one of whom is just obviously a step ahead of everyone else.

I’ve witnessed this phenomenon time and time again at the several final tables I have gotten to cover at the WSOP over the last two years. I’m thinking in particular of players like Phil Galfond, J.C. Tran, and Layne Flack and how they won their bracelets last summer. Nine guys sat down, but one obviously had something on the other eight. Same was the case for Vanessa Selbst at her final table last summer, that PLO event she won, although her dominance in that event seemed to begin well before the final nine, as she emerged as the clear favorite with probably 50 or more players left.

No, it shouldn’t surprise us too much to see the same players back at these final tables, and the same players taking them down. When I got home early this morning (about 3 a.m.), I did as I normally do and turned on the teevee for a while as I tried to wind down mentally from the long day of scribblin’ and chip-tallyin’. Watched ESPN and saw highlights of Albert Pujols hitting two home runs for the Cardinals yesterday, and Torii Hunter hitting three homers for the L.A. Angels.

When we watch a baseball game and see a player hit that second (or third) home run, our initial response is always to be a little awe-struck. Man, oh man -- he did it again! But it shouldn’t surprise us. These guys are good, they have skills. And they’re playing well, seeing the ball, timing their swing just right. Of course he did it again.

That’s where Phil Ivey is at right now. And Brock Parker (still alive in the round of 64 of Event No. 29, the $10,000 World Championship Heads Up No-Limit Hold’em event). And a few dozen others playing every day over at the Rio this month.

Even this limit hold’em event I’m presently covering -- which, to be honest, has evolved into a little bit of a card-catching contest here in the latter stages -- is nevertheless a clear test of good decision-making and players’ ability to outwit one another.

The structure of this LHE event has been kind of interesting to watch play out. Players began with 4,500 chips and stakes of 50/100, meaning everybody had 45 big bets with which to start. By the start of Level 3, we’d only lost a handful of the 643 who began the tournament, so when that level began (with 100/200 stakes), the average was around 20 big bets each.

Despite the fact that players began to be eliminated at a very fast clip thereafter, the blinds/stakes rose rapidly enough to make the average about 11-12 big bets per stack by dinner time on Day 1. Most of last night the average had dipped down to 9 big bets and below, and when they begin play today the average will be just a little over 8 big bets per player. Which means about half of the 15 players who return today are really only good for one big hand (if that).

Even so, there’s still skill involved here. It isn’t strictly a card-catching contest. Each player’s decisions, relative to those of his opponents, will determine how the sucker is going to go. It remains fascinating to watch in such close proximity people playing poker at such a high level. We see our share of poor play, no doubt, but there’s a lot to admire going on here, too.

Back at it again this afternoon, as I help Change100 see Event No. 26 through to its conclusion. Unless Ivey is winning another bracelet in some other event -- in which case you might well want to follow that -- come on over to PokerNews’ live reporting page and see it through with us.

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2009 WSOP, Day 17: It Was Fun

Date: Sat, Jun 13, 2009 Internet

Yesterday I helped cover the first day of Event No. 26, the $1,500 Limit Hold’em event. I like LHE, of course, and so didn’t mind drawing the event. In fact, I’m starting to think when the day comes that I do take my shot and sit down at one of these suckers, it will probably be in this very event.

But I understand why some players (and reporters) subscribe to the idea that the game -- as Barry Greenstein says in Ace on the River -- is like watching paint dry.

It was certainly a relatively more sedate scene over there in the Blue section where Event No. 26 was being played than it was on the other side of the Amazon Room last night. There were two final tables yesterday -- the $1,500 No-Limit Shootout (Event No. 22) and the $10,000 World Championship 2-7 Draw (Event No. 23) -- and both had attracted some raucous fans making lots of noise, particularly as we reached midnight and beyond, making the limit hold’em lot seem even more serene. Every few minutes a huge roar would erupt to punctuate a big hand over at the main feature table, causing the limit players to stop and look up before returning to their hands.

Partly out of necessity because of staffing, for some of the events PokerNews has scaled back coverage of Day Ones, meaning we don’t necessarily try to track all players’ chip counts, bustouts, and so forth from the very start, but focus on that more once we get to Day Two and the money. Not the case for all of the events, but for some of the lesser-profile ones -- like the $1,500 LHE -- that’s the strategy.

Even if it weren’t a matter of necessity, staffing-wise, I think it is a good call to be a little more selective early on in a tournament and try to report on items of interest rather than aim for some sort of pseudo-comprehensive coverage. Which truth be told, ain’t really feasible even if you had a dozen or more reporters assigned to the event.

So there were just a couple of us -- me and Neil, a terrific field reporter -- and we did our best to give some idea of what was happening, selecting mini-stories along the way to share and report.

One phenomenon I noticed early on was the fact that there seemed to be a lot more women in the tournament than in a typical WSOP event. I mentioned the fact a couple of times in the live blog, but tried not to make too much of it. In the blog, I suggested that of the 643 entrants, at least 60 were women. In fact, the number might have been even higher, which meant more than 10% of the field were women. That’s at least one per table, and indeed there were a few tables with two or three women playing.

In most open WSOP events, one finds less than 5% of the players are women. Indeed, in certain of the higher buy-in events with fewer players, relatively speaking, there will sometimes only be two or three women in the entire field. Even in the lower buy-in events one generally only sees a woman every three or four tables or so, if that.

I remember that $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event I covered last summer (Event No. 19), won by Vanessa Selbst. There were 759 entered in that one, and I’m pretty sure of that number there weren’t more than six or seven women there at the start. Selbst was the chip leader for a lot of the latter part of that tourney, when it got down under 100 players, and I think Kathy Leibert was the only other woman still in the tourney at that point (she finished 72nd).

Like I say, in the live blog I reported on this aspect of the tourney, but didn’t editorialize, as it ain’t really the place for such. I think it is probably an interesting issue to explore, and there’s probably some points to be made about the reasons why the fixed limit game might appeal more to women than does a no-limit or pot-limit game. (And, by the same token, how many men seem to prefer the no-limit games to LHE.)

I also found myself wondering as the night wore on how the presence of relatively more women in the field might have affected the overall atmosphere of the tournament, especially at those tables where there were two or three women seated. I said above that the LHE crowd was “relatively more sedate,” but that doesn’t mean they weren’t expressive or having fun. And, in fact, at some tables having fun seemed to be the main focus, with a lot of laughing and camaraderie, especially as we reached the last levels of the night.

You might have played in these kinds of games before -- I know I have. Low-limit poker where the players kind of seem to pull for each other to make their hands, as if it were blackjack or some other game where they weren’t playing against each other but against the house. I guess I shouldn’t assume the presence of the women helped create this atmosphere -- indeed, it could possibly be explained as more a function of the game itself. But it might have had something to do with it.

For most of the night I was seated within a few feet of a table where Shannon Elizabeth was playing, and much of the time there were one or two other women at her table as well. Lots of laughing and smiling going on there all night, and I don’t think it was all due to the men being spellbound by the attractive actress (although that’s certainly possible). Hard to explain it, but sitting a few feet away I could sense the whole night developing into this meaningful, shared experience for the players that was going to be a fond memory for them, regardless of how they finished the tournament.

That’s not to say people weren’t playing to win -- of course, they were. But unlike most tourneys, where you’re often looking at a collection of non-communicative individuals in constant conflict with each other, one had more of a sense of small “groups” genuinely relating to one another and enjoying themselves. Indeed, on more than one occasion I overheard players telling their tablemates with sincerity “it was fun” as they were busted from the tournament, and receiving similarly sincere well wishes in return.

I know some people feel like these sort of pleasantries aren’t really part of poker -- that the idea isn’t to socialize or “have fun,” but to win at all costs. I get that. But being surrounded by people who are making an effort to be friendly and engage one another in this way does make it a little more agreeable for those of us assigned to hang around them for 13-14 hours and report on what they’re doing.

I’ll be back for Day 2 later today. There are 124 players left (including a short-stacked Elizabeth and seven other women). Greenstein is still there, too, despite that thing he said about LHE and paint drying.

The plan, as usual, will be to play down to the final nine, or to stop at 3 a.m., whichever comes first. The blinds/limits are pretty high -- indeed, they have been since about the fifth level, in relative terms, with the average stack being only 10-12 big bets -- so I’m going to guess we lose a lot of folks fairly quickly, though I don’t know if we’ll get all of the way to nine today.

Follow along and find out over on PokerNews.

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2009 WSOP, Day 16: Does Humor Belong in Poker Tournament Reporting?

Date: Fri, Jun 12, 2009 Internet

I assume Julius Goat and perhaps a few others recognize who I’m paraphrasing in that post title.

I had thought yesterday that I might deliver a thesis on the purpose and significance of puns and/or wordplay -- specifically with regard to their use in the context of poker tournament reporting -- but have decided against such. After all, nothing is less funny than to explain a joke.

Of course, while puns are certainly jokey and perhaps rightly regarded as a particularly facile form of humor, they aren’t strictly that. They serve a purpose beyond just causing a momentary chuckle -- or groan -- for the reader. Or can, anyway. And so maybe I will say just a word or two about ’em.

When I alluded to the subject of puns a couple of days ago, the Poker Grump pointed me to a recent New York Times piece on the subject which includes a lot of famous quotes about puns. There the author, Joseph Tartakovsky, starts off quoting John Dryden, the Restoration poet, playwright, and critic, saying that a pun is the “lowest and most groveling kind of wit.” Tartakovsky also alludes to the 18th-century essayist and dictionary-writer Dr. Samuel Johnson’s hatred of puns, although points out that Johnson -- a well-regarded conversationalist -- would himself indulge in puns in his interactions with others.

Tartakovsky also mentions Shakespeare -- who, of course, puns all the time, even in his tragedies -- but doesn’t specifically talk about Johnson’s criticism of Shakespeare’s punning.

In his famous Preface to an edition of Shakespeare’s plays, Johnson talks about how puns (or “quibbles,” as the original Dr. J. calls ’em) are “to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures, it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible.”

For Johnson, the biggest issue is how the presence of a pun tends to distract the reader or audience, especially when it undercuts the necessary sobriety of a tragedy. At the very beginning of Hamlet, for example, the prince comes onto the stage and speaks with his uncle, Claudius, who (we will eventually learn) has murdered Hamlet’s father, the king of Denmark, and not only taken the throne but married Hamlet’s mother. Here Claudius calls Hamlet “son,” then asks him why he’s so gloomy: “How is it that the clouds still hang on you?” Hamlet responds by saying facetiously “Not so, my lord. I am too much i’ the sun.”

It’s a bit of wordplay that allows Hamlet to answer Claudius’ question by saying, in effect, stop calling me “son.” But Johnson regards such puns as evidence of some “malignant power” taking over Shakespeare’s mind, as if his love of wordplay is like some sort of mental disorder that causes him to forget his primary purpose. Johnson goes on (with some hyperbole) to say that for Shakespeare a pun was a “golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation,” something which “gave him such delight, that he was content to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth.”

Johnson is right to criticize the unseemly, gratuitous use of puns or wordplay that distracts the reader or audience from what is really important about a character or scene. However, in the case of Hamlet, his constant joking around -- as evidenced by his frequent puns and witty utterances -- is a big part of who he is, a young man who isn’t convinced that life isn’t an absurd jest. There are other places in Shakespeare where the “quibbles” are less integral, but there’s often a purpose to them, too, that makes it easier to defend Shakespeare’s use of them.

Which brings us back to poker and tourney reporting, in particular the use of puns in post titles when live blogging events. As far as I’m concerned, the occasional bit of wordplay or pun in a post title can be a plus as long as it doesn’t inordinately get in the way of the primary purpose of the blog -- namely, to report the action in a way that makes readers want to stay on the site and follow along.

There are a few ways to achieve that purpose of keeping the audience engaged -- to be accurate, to be clear, and to be interesting. If the blog failed too greatly in any of these ways, readers would (and should) stop reading.

So, when a player named Adam Fyshe wins a hand in which his flop bet causes another player to think so long the clock has to be called before he folds, a headline “Fyshe Makes Opponent Tank” should be acceptable because, well, it’s accurate, it’s clear, and it’s interesting.

But is it funny? Maybe for a moment. According to Tartakovsky, “Puns are the feeblest species of humor because they are ephemeral: whatever comic force they possess never outlasts the split second it takes to resolve the semantic confusion.” He’s probably right.

Okay, even if it is funny (a little), the question remains: Does humor -- even of the most fleeting variety -- belong in poker tournament reporting? I mean, these guys are playing for hundreds of thousands of dollars after all -- it is serious business. And for 85-90% of the players who fail to cash, and even for those who do cash but come up short of the ultimate goal of winning the sucker, the tourneys do play out like “tragedies,” at least in the technical sense of failing to have happy endings.

That said, it is still a game -- a form of play. And so keeping it light (within reason) is probably the right instinct, generally speaking.

The headline last night on ESPN for the story reporting the Lakers’ victory over the Magic was “Fisher King,” alluding simultaneously to those big shots Laker guard Derek Fisher hit at the end of the game as well as to that figure who turns up in stories of King Arthur whose purpose is to take care of the Holy Grail. At first, the allusion might seem meaningless, but think about how the sports championships are often referred to as the “Holy Grail” and you see there’s something appropriate to the pun’s use. (It’s also accurate, clear, and interesting.)

There’s no denying puns make us groan, though. And I agree that they shouldn’t be overdone to the point that they get in the way of communicating accurately and clearly and keeping the reader engaged. In other words, it’s okay to cause a bit of eye-rolling, but you don’t want the eyes to roll away from your words altogether.

So roll on over to PokerNews’ live reporting page to follow the coverage as the WSOP continues. Five different events on the sked today, including the one I’ll be covering -- Event No. 26, the $1,500 Limit Hold’em. See you there.

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2009 WSOP, Day 15: Live from the Rio, Part II (The Event No. 19 Final Table)

Date: Thu, Jun 11, 2009 Internet

Last night’s final table of Event No. 19, the $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Handed event won by Brock Parker -- his second WSOP bracelet in four days! -- was fun to cover for a few reasons.

For one, since the FT was six-handed, and since those six players all stuck around for the first couple of hours of play, we got a chance to become somewhat familiar with all of the players and thus perhaps get a little more invested in what was happening than we might have otherwise. During those first couple of levels, I was writing up posts that included short little bios of all six. So besides getting to know their playing styles, the personalities of the players started to diverge a bit, too, at least from where I was sitting.

Two of the six who made the FT are roommates, actually -- Clayton Newman and Alex Wilson. They are sharing a house with some other poker players in their early 20s this summer. Newman was short-stacked and ended up going out in sixth. Wilson seemed an especially confident player, although after we returned from the break, he’d push what was still a decent-sized stack with K-Q, got called by Joe Serock who held A-J, and thus hit the rail in fifth.

Serock was the chip leader for most of the final table. He had an interesting demeanor -- very stoic, responding with a sleepy, heavy-lidded look whenever the action was on him. He was the aggressor in terms of betting for much of the day yesterday, but when players began playing back at him he seemed to become somewhat tentative.

On the little bio sheet that tourney officials have the players fill out when they reach final tables, they are asked to list other interests and hobbies. In the space provided, Serock (who is 21 years old) wrote “I just play poker.”

As I was incorporating these little biographical tidbits in the live blog, I thought about how so many of these guys -- aged 21, 22, 23 -- seem not to have much else to report about themselves beyond the fact that they play poker (mostly online). Of course, how lengthy or interesting of an autobiography could any of us written when we were in our early 20s? What sort of memoir could you have written for yourself at that age?

The diminutive Russell Crane appeared to play a solid game from beginning to end, and I sensed the other players were always wary whenever he entered a pot. Was perhaps more often than not on the conservative side, but was doing an excellent job pushing his stack whenever he dipped into that range where he was too short-stacked to play after the flop, but not so much that he didn’t have fold equity. He played a gritty game to make it to third place last night.

Crane had some other hobbies listed on his sheet -- skateboarding, golf -- and I liked how he seemed in an indirect way to be expressing some enthusiasm when writing about himself. The table’s only 30-plus-year old player, Jesse Rios, also took advantage of the space provided to share some personal details. In that section he mentioned raising his two daughters, his enthusiasm for that endeavor clearly communicated with exclamation points.

Rios had the most expressive personality at the table, by far. He was really the only one at the table who would ever try to engage the others in any banter. At final tables played at the main feature table this summer, we are seeing waitresses come around every couple of hours with bags of Jack Link’s beef jerky for the players -- kind of a silly sight to witness being repeated night after night. Last night all of the players declined the offer except for Rios, who took several bags, then threw them to spectators with a big grin on his face. Definitely made the guy endearing.

Rios limped into several pots and would passively call a lot, especially when his big blind was raised. There was one hand in particular when Parker raised to 90,000 from the cutoff (the blinds were 20,000/40,000), and it folded to Rios who just called from the big blind. The flop came , and Rios led out with a more than pot-sized bet of 300,000. Parker didn’t think too long before folding, at which point Rios showed his pocket jacks. (Rios ended up going out in fourth.)

It was five-handed at that point, and what was most interesting was how after the hand all four of the other players looked up at Rios with wide eyes, and continued to study him as the next hand was being dealt. You could sense how all four were suddenly thinking “those chips are gonna be mine.”

That said, I was still identifying somewhat with Rios and his scared-seeming play. ’Cos that Brock Parker... he’s definitely not a guy I’d want to play much from out of position. Or in position, for that matter.

Parker, with bald head and full beard and mustache, is a bit of an imposing presence, and he gave absolutely nothing away all night in terms of physical tells. No emotion whatsoever. There was one hand heads up when I caught him stifling a yawn, and I even mentioned it in the blog, it was so unusual to see.

Once it got to heads up, Serock had a 2-to-1 chip advantage over Parker. But Parker seemed to have control pretty much the entire way, chipping up, taking the lead, and eventually receiving the good fortune of being dealt pocket queens on the same hand Serock got pocket tens. Interestingly, while heads up lasted quite a while (a couple of hours), I only remember three or four hands being shown down, including the last one. Would love to know what Parker’s cards were. Was pretty clear Serock wasn’t picking up much in the way of good hands, but there was no way of knowing whether or not Parker did.

Parker’s achievement this week is quite remarkable -- two WSOP bracelets in four days, in the two consecutive events in which he registered. Both were in six-max tourneys, one limit hold’em and the other no-limit HE. The field was 367 in the first one, 1,068 in the second. The dude has game.

Like I say, a fun final table to cover, both because of the hands and players, but also because of the fun of working with Homer, my live blogging partner last night. We decided not to do hand-for-hand, though still ended up reporting probably 75% of the FT hands played. It was a good decision, I think, as it made for a much more interesting blog to read.

Back later.

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2009 WSOP, Day 15: Live from the Rio

Date: Thu, Jun 11, 2009 Internet

Yesterday’s final day of Event No. 19, the $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Handed event, was one of the more intriguing ones, poker-wise, I think I have covered this summer. Particularly the final six-handed table, where there were several interesting hands and moments along the way. Amazingly, Brock Parker, who won his first WSOP bracelet last Sunday in a short-handed limit event (Event No. 14), won this one, too.

I wanted to share a few thoughts about that final table here, both about the play and my helping cover it for PokerNews. I also wanted to write something today about the subject of puns (as I alluded to in yesterday’s post). I am off today, and so I think I might come back on here more than once this afternoon to write about these topics in separate posts. Wanted to pass along a couple of messages first, though.

During a break yesterday I appeared as a guest on the Hardcore Poker Show (the 6/10/09 episode) to talk for a short while from the Rio about the WSOP. That show goes out live on Sirius radio, then is made available as a podcast.

If yr curious to hear me, click here to get to the segment on which I appear. This is the first half of the show, and I’m on there right at the end for the last five minutes or so. Thanks to hosts Chris Tessaro and Rob Pizzo for having me on -- it was a blast.

Incidentally, when I told my blogging partner, Homer, last night that I was going to be on the show and explained that it appears on the Sirius network, you can guess what his response was.

“Oh, that’s the network where they never make any jokes, right?”

Like I say, more on puns later.

Finally, I want to send good vibes to my friend the Poker Grump who is taking a seat in today’s Event No. 24, the $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em event that starts up in just a little while at noon today. That picture to the left is a live action shot of him running good in the PokerListings’ Run Good Challenge 3: WSOP Edition last month where he won his seat in today’s event. We’ll all get to read about his experience on his excellent blog later on.

Back in a while.

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2009 WSOP, Day 14: Insert Clever Post Title Here (Wordplay Optional)

Date: Wed, Jun 10, 2009 Internet

As planned, I yesterday worked that Day 2 of Event No. 19, the $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Handed event. We were down one field reporter, making it a bit strenuous early on when the field was 135. But once we got down under 50 we had a fighting chance to identify everyone, follow their rapidly changing chip stacks, and report most of the important hands.

Ended up with just 11 when the night concluded, a little shy of 3 a.m. And cards go back in the air at noon today, which means I barely managed to score about five hours of sleep before getting up again to down some java, shower, shave, and get my weary carcass back over to the Rio to cover this final day. Oh, and write a little something here.

Apparently once this one gets down to the six-handed final table we will be on the feature table where ESPN360.com will be streaming it live. I still don’t personally know anybody who actually has access to ESPN360, but I know there must be a few out there who do.

Was writing alongside Homer last night, a good guy whose predilection for puns probably exceeds my own. Perhaps feeling vaguely threatened, I found myself titling a post describing a big Men Nguyen double up hand last night as “It’s Reigning Men.” (Groan!) I think I might say a little something tomorrow -- when I have more time and a clearer head -- about the relative worth of puns, that form of humor about which Edgar Allan Poe once noted “those most dislike who are least able to utter them.”

Not much time for anything this morning, so let me quickly point you to three other places to go to try to satisfy yr WSOP cravings.

Ran into Homer’s fellow countryman Snoopy (also an Englander) the other day. Snoopy was a live blogger for PokerNews last summer, and while we never worked the same tourney together I always enjoyed reading his posts (many of which also included some wordplay to go along with the reporting). And I’d been a close follower of his blog, too, Snoopy System, where he also wrote almost every day last summer. Once the WSOP ended last year, Snoopy decided he’d had enough of the blogging thing for a while and stopped cold turkey writing the Snoopy System. In his final post over there last July, he noted how time-consuming the blog had become and how he needed a rest, and so he took one.

Good news. Not only is Snoopy back in Vegas, but back writing about poker again, keeping a daily blog over at Black Belt Poker. See if you can’t fit Snoopy back into your regular reading this summer, as I’m sure you’ll enjoy his take on poker’s annual circus.

Secondly, I think everyone reading Hard-Boiled Poker probably already reads Pokerati, but if somehow you don’t, then you should get over there PDQ. Or at least ASAP.

When you do get over there, you will find lots of posts every day covering all things WSOP, including a good deal of behind-the-scenes stuff that some us aren’t as able (or willing) to share.

Finally, let me join the chorus of others praising this excellent video history of the World Series of Poker produced for PokerNews by a coupla cool cats, Tom Kinsman and Gloria Balding. Its called 40 Years of WSOP and this is the first of three planned parts, focusing on the early years. Good stuff.



See you over at the PokerNews’ live reporting page today, and back here tomorrow perhaps to deal with that issue of whether there’s a place for puns in poker tourney reporting. The fact of the matter is, I do understand -- and even agree with -- the point of view that puns can be over the top sometimes.

That being said, we all know it doesn’t matter how much you push the envelope, it will still be stationery.

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2009 WSOP, Day 13: The Dollar Ain’t What It Used to Be

Date: Tue, Jun 9, 2009 Internet

Was a good day off yesterday. Did not go to the Rio. Mostly just hung out at the home-away-from-home, doing some reading and writing. In the evening I went for dinner with the Poker Grump and Cardgrrl at the Grand Lux Café at the Venetian where we had a delicious meal and enjoyable conversation. Many topics arose, including the Grump’s upcoming shot at a WSOP event this Thursday.

Quick little anecdote about my trip over to the Venetian...

If yr gonna come to Vegas, you need to be ready to do a lot of tipping. And if yr short-stacked like me, you want one-dollar bills for that purpose, as five is too much for you to drop each time.

As I was leaving for dinner, I realized I didn’t have any singles and so went over to ask the fellow manning the hotel desk if he could change a five spot for me. As he was counting out the bills, I was uncrumpling my fiver to hand to him. Grabbed both ends, gave a little tug, and damned if the sucker didn’t tear right in half!

He handed me the bills and I sheepishly held out the two pieces to him. No problem. He had some scotch tape right there at the desk and quickly made the needed repair. As he did, I started to slip the ones in my wallet when I noticed one of them was damaged -- it was only about two-thirds what it should have been.

I laughingly handed the bill back to him for another. “Wow, the dollar sure isn’t as strong as it used to be,” I said as he fished out a fresh one for me. He wordlessly nodded. Not quite sure my little quip landed.

I drove over to the Venetian and as I was walking from the parking deck inside I noticed on the ground three one-dollar bills in the middle of the walkway. I looked around. No one in sight. So I scooped ’em up. I wondered how many people had passed by without even bothering to bend over and pick up the ones.

“An orphaned pot,” the Grump would say later when I related the story.

Cardgrrl asked me during dinner for my thoughts regarding turnouts thus far at the WSOP, and I realized I didn’t have much of a feel for how things were going in that area. I knew some tourneys, like that $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em “Stimulus Special,” had attracted the maximum (or more), but didn’t really know whether any larger trends had emerged as yet.

Exactly one-third of the 57 bracelet events have gotten underway by now, so I thought it would be semi-interesting to compare field sizes from 2008 and 2009 thus far.

Of the 19 events that have started, four are technically “new” events insofar as there was not an equivalent game/buy-in last year. Of the remaining 15 events, nine attracted fewer entrants, and six attracted more.

Some of what you see here is a bit skewed. For example, I’m comparing Event No. 7 to the first $1,500 NLHE event last year, which was at the start of the schedule last year. Obviously many of those who would’ve played in that one opted instead for the “Stimulus Special” this year. That column listing “projections” comes from the WSOP Staff Resource Guide -- they nailed some of the projections with uncanny accuracy, while others were off more than a little.

Not really enough here yet from which to draw conclusions, so I’ll keep tallying this as we go. I think overall, though, it is starting to shape up as many expected -- namely, not a lot of growth or decline, but a year in which the WSOP essentially holds steady.

Which I think, given all of the current economic woes, would be a definite triumph. As we poker players know, sometimes walking away even is a victory in and of itself.

I go back to the Rio today to help cover the second day of Event No. 19, the $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Handed event. Follow along over on PokerNews’ live reporting page.

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2009 WSOP, Day 12: Chips Go Flying at the Speed of Sound

Date: Mon, Jun 8, 2009 Internet

A whirlwind of a day covering the last stage of Event No. 13, the $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em event won by Keven “Stamdogg” Stammen. There were 20 players returning, and the plan was to play it to the end. Thought I was in for another marathon, but we burned through the field in just seven-and-a-half hours (including a one-hour dinner break), and the sucker was over before 9 p.m.

Yesterday I worked again with Tom Bostic who has experience covering the WSOP in the past for CardPlayer as well as more recently helping cover tourneys for the World Poker Tour. He is Tom Terrific on the floor, so we decided he’d stick by the tables while I stuck by the laptop. Thus does the live blog inaccurately suggest I’m the only “author” of the day’s posts, but the fact is I was primarily interpreting and passing along what Tom gave me.

Indeed, only a small percentage of the posts I write on PokerNews are ever solely my own creation, as I am often working from field reporters’ notes or other sources of information. I have done a lot more of my own “field work” this summer already, such as was the case with that funny hand from Saturday when the player check-raised Carter King without having any cards. But really everything a person sees over at PN is produced by a team of reporters, bloggers, photographers, editors, and others behind the scenes helping managing it all.

From my vantage point, I was generally only 15-20 feet from the table(s), looking down on the players from my perch up above the floor. So I could hear table talk and witness other details (e.g., whether a player tanked before making a decision) that I could include in the posts. But I couldn’t see bet amounts or cards, and Tom was on top of all of that.

Was struggling for one small stretch with a couple of sort-of-similar player names -- wasn’t a matter of misidentifying players, just an eyes-to-brain-to-fingers thing -- and in fact was starting to think that after working 70-plus hours in five days I’d reached a kind of mental and/or physical limit beyond which I might not be able to function. Got a second wind, though, and the night ended well.

Seemed kind of stunning, really, how quickly it went. Tom was counting hands once we got down to 10 players, and it only took a total of 90 hands to go from 10 to 1. We weren’t counting hands before that, but in terms of minutes played, it took a lot less time to go from 20 to 10 -- something like a little over two hours of play compared to about twice that for the ten-handed final table to play out.

I’m going to estimate, then, that it took about 50-60 hands to go from 20 players to 10. Looking back to the end of the previous day, when we had three eliminations in the last two hands of the night, that means the last 22 players were eliminated in about 150 hands -- about one every seven hands or so. Or roughly 768 miles per hour. (Ha.)

From the reporting side, that’s about as hectic as it gets, since reporting late-game eliminations requires not just a formal post (usually including a picture), but adjustments to chip counts and payout pages, too. That is in addition, of course, to reporting non-bustout hands and keeping the counts updated and accurate, too.

But never mind the intensity of what I’m doing... let’s look briefly at what the players are facing. Could there some explanation in the blinds/antes structure for the rapid end to Event No. 13?

Looking at it strictly in terms of the average number of big blinds each player had during play yesterday, there does not appear to have been any huge jumps here at the end that would have ignited a lot of movement. However, we might point to at least three factors that would help explain why things went so quickly yesterday. (Note: There were actually 27 players left when Level 20 began late on Day 2, but I'm just picking up the analysis here at the end of the night when we were still in Level 20 and had gotten down to 23.)

First of all, the fast-rising antes here at the end probably shouldn’t be overlooked -- they definitely cut into the shorter stacks and got people moving as we progressed from level to level.

Secondly, with 23 players left at average stacks of just 30 BBs, we really were already past the point in the tourney where we should be expecting a lot of all-in shoves.

F-Train is much better than I am at estimating these things, having played in and reported on many more tournaments than I, and he has talked to me (and on his blog) about that 40 BB-mark that seems to be the range where the field starts thinning more quickly. As F-Train puts it, “at some point, the pressure from the blinds will catch up to the total number of chips in play and force players to bust out, no matter how many are left in the field. In my experience, the point that the number of chips in play catches up to the structure for a NLHE tournament is when the average stack is about 40 BBs.”

Before we started yesterday, I didn’t pay much attention at all to the fact that those 20 players coming back had an average of 30 BBs at the beginning of the day -- if I had, I probably should’ve expected the day to go much more quickly than I was dreading it might.

The third factor worth pointing out is the fact that the eventual winner, Keven Stammen, started to push out to a big chip lead once it got down to six or seven players, meaning the “Avg. BB” number for the table is a bit misleading, since the truth was all but Stammen (I think) had less than that.

Have some running around to do today, but I expect I will mostly be sticking close to the home-away-from-home here on my day off. Meanwhile, go over to PokerNews’ live reporting to see how those five ongoing events (Events No. 15-19) are playing out.

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2009 WSOP, Day 11: A Hand Worth Remembering

Date: Sun, Jun 7, 2009 Internet

As expected, I was at the Rio until about 3 a.m. last night, so yet another 13-plus hour day of scribbling, chip tallying, and other forms of data entry for your weary gumshoe. Gonna try not to make my increasing fatigue the theme of every post here, but it’s hard not to think about anything else when yr working about twice the hours that yr sleeping.

Today I go back for the “final table” of Event No. 13, that $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em event I helped cover yesterday -- although we ended the night with 20 players still with chips. Meaning I cannot imagine getting done within 12 hours today, and it may well go on much longer than that. Thankfully I have Monday off to try to recharge a bit.

Did want to share with you a few items from yesterday’s live blog, the first of which might well have been one of the stranger hands of the WSOP thus far -- one which I just happened to have been at the table to witness.

The hand occurred early in the day, a little while before the cash bubble burst (at 117 players). I had gone over to Table #60 (in the Orange section) to see if I could catch Carter “ckingusc” King -- winner of last fall’s PokerStars’ WCOOP Main Event and also a Stars Sunday Million winner -- play a hand.

That’s often how it goes when the field is still more than a hundred players and of those there are some “notables” whom perhaps I haven’t reported on much yet. I have come to realize that I could feasibly report just about any hand I witness, as long as I have player names. There is literally always something interesting happening and potentially worth relating. Now that I’ve done this for a while, the mechanics -- i.e., figuring the bet amounts, following the sequence of action, recording the cards -- isn’t as much of a challenge as it was, say, when I was reporting my first live tourney at the start of last summer. Meaning I am able to see other, more interesting aspects of hands a little more clearly.

So I go down and wait a hand or two and then comes one in which King is involved. I know I’m probably going to be able to report it, no matter how mundane it turns out to be.

But I got lucky this time. Read what happened:

Talk About Betting With Air
Here’s one from the “Ever Heard of This?” file.

A player limped in middle position, and Carter “ckingusc” King limped as well from the button. The small blind thought a while, then decided to fold. Then the big blind player did something unusual, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

The flop came and it checked around to King who bet 3,100. The player in the big blind then slowly slid out three stacks of yellow chips -- a check-raise to 15,000.

The dealer then politely slid them back to the player. “You don't have a hand,” he explained. Apparently he had inadvertently mucked his hand rather than simply checking his option. The MP player folded, and the table had a good laugh, wondering whether or not he could’ve gotten the others to fold without cards.

King has about 99,000 at the moment.

It was truly hilarious, with all of the players laughing and saying how they’d never seen anything quite like it. Even the bettor had a sheepish smile, and added something afterwards about how maybe he avoided losing a lot of money on the hand. It looked at first like he might have wanted to challenge the dealer a bit, saying that the dealer had somehow pulled his hand into the muck against his wishes, but I think he realized that couldn’t have happened.

Was talking to Haley about it later in the day and she brought up a story T.J. Cloutier tells about winning a hand without cards by betting his opponent out after he’d mucked his hand. I remembered reading that somewhere. I’m pretty sure it appears in Warwick Dunnett’s Poker Wizards, though I’ll bet Cloutier tells the story (probably more than once) in his own books, too. It really appeared in this hand that the check-raiser was in good shape to take the hand until the dealer pushed his chips back his way. Nobody is going to be winning any hands after mucking their cards at the WSOP, I don’t think.

Still, fun to think about the possibility. And I kind of liked thinking about the whole idea of making a play without a hand -- not that unlike what I’ll do when reporting, sometimes, when I want to write up something without having much a hand on which to hang a post.

That was probably the highlight of the day. Later on, once we were down to four tables, a player named Andrew Einstein busted and I wrote a post describing his last hand:

34th Not Bad, Relatively Speaking
After taking that hit versus Matthew Lynn, Andrew Einstein pushed all in with A-8 and was up against Roland Isra’s A-Q. The board brought a couple of aces, but no eight, reducing the mass of Einstein’s chips to zero, meaning he had no more energy to continue. Einstein picks up $11,886 for his 34th place finish.

Isra now has 185,000 chips.

Obvious? Perhaps. Not as obvious as some crack about it doesn’t take an Einstein to see ace-eight is worse than ace-queen, though.

Right at the end of the night, during the last couple of hands played, in fact, Phil Ivey was sitting with an average stack -- about 250,000 or more -- and it looked like he would be returning today in good position to shoot for yet another bracelet. The large screen television back in that corner of the Amazon was tuned to a local channel, and Poker After Dark was playing with the sound down. Soon I noticed that Ivey was part of the episode -- kind of recalling, for me, that picture of our reporter Mickey counting the chips in a picture of him counting chips.

B.J. Nemeth was there getting photos for his photo blog on PokerRoad, so I let him know about it. I also told Flipchip, the PokerNews photog, know, too, and he got a picture of Ivey in the foreground and on the screen behind (see left).

Somewhat surprisingly, Ivey lost nearly his entire stack on a gamble with ace-ten on the night’s very last hand, and so returns with just 31,000 chips today -- 20th out of 20 players. Anybody wanting to take pictures of Ivey today will need to do so quickly, I’d think.

See y’all over at the PokerNews live blog for more. And remember, you got to know when to hold’em, know when to fold ‘em, and know when you didn’t hold’em and did fold’em.

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2009 WSOP, Day 10: Life Passes By

Date: Sat, Jun 6, 2009 Internet

Was around 2:30 a.m. last night when I found myself slowly shuffling down the long hallway that runs from the Amazon ballroom to the parking lot out back of the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino.

After about 13 hours after my event -- the $2,500 Pot-Limit Hold’em/Pot-Limit Omaha (Event No. 10) -- had begun, we finally had a winner. Started the day with 18 players. Down to five by the dinner break, then it took ’em four hours or something to lose another. When five were left one fellow (Najib Bennani) was down to just 50,000 chips, then tripled up, doubled up a few times, and ended up managing to finish second (to Rami Boukai).

Thus ended my three days covering that event, which in the end totaled something close to 40 hours of work. And I’m back over there again today and tomorrow to finish out Event No. 13, a $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em affair. There are 175 players coming back today from their starting field of 1,088, so this looks like yet another event that is going to run up against that Rule No. 96 -- the one that says they’ll stop at 3 a.m. regardless of how many players are remaining.

Which means I’m looking at continuing my streak of 13-plus hour workdays through Sunday, then, thankfully, I’ll have Monday off to try and recharge.

It’s fun. And somewhat rewarding, still. A grind, for sure, though. And when all yr doing is writing up poker hands, eating here and there, and sleeping, it’s hard not to feel a little bit like life might be passing you by.

Like I say, I was shuffling slowly down the Rio hallway. Hands in pockets, media badge swinging from my neck, laptop over my shoulder. Half-formed poker hands flitting through my consciousness.

My partner, FerricRamsium, and I were taking turns last night filling the roles of reporter and blogger, with one of us watching the action and reporting to the other who’d enter hands, chip counts, and other items into the blog. Once they’d gotten down to five or so, I was writing down every single hand when it was my turn to stand over by the table (though we’d only report the more significant ones). Actually ended up writing the final hand on the cardboard back of the notepad, having gone through all of the sheets of yet another one.

Not a lot of chance to relax yr mental faculties in that situation, although I did have the pleasure at one juncture of visiting some with bellatrix who came by after playing in Event No. 14 (the $2,500 Limit Hold’em event). After our visit, she’d headed over to see what was happening in the cash games in the front right quadrant of the Rio. When my day was done I wandered over but didn’t spot her. She’d either left, or the dense fog that had settled in my brain had made it too difficult for me to see clearly anymore.

But I did find the ballroom exit okay, and so made my way out and down the hall. Was nearing the doors leading to the parking lot on the left when suddenly I hear a faint whirring sound behind me. Was just about to turn around to look when the sound careened past on my right.

I looked up somewhat woozily as the cowboy hat-wearing man on the scooter roared past, moving at what seemed to my dazed self the speed of thought itself.

Might ought to look into getting one of those.

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2009 WSOP, Day 9: Count On It

Date: Fri, Jun 5, 2009 Internet

Another 14 hours or so in the Rio yesterday, live blogging for PokerNews the second day of Event No. 10, the $2,500 Pot-Limit Hold’em/Pot-Limit Omaha. Day started with 99 players, and the idea had been to play down to the final nine. But we knew we wouldn’t be getting there by 3 a.m. -- the time beyond which according to Rule No. 96 no non-televised Day 2 will extend.

(Actually, the final table of Event No. 10 is on the schedule to be streamed live over on Bluff today, but I’m not sure if that will be the case or not.)

We started at 2 p.m. yesterday. After two levels (by 4:30 p.m.), we were down to 66. Took four more levels, with an hour-long dinner break in between, to get to 33. That was about 10 p.m. A couple of levels later we were at 20, and at 1:30 a.m. we were down to 18. Then we didn’t have a single bustout after that.

So there will be 18 playing down to one today. Just as we were counting on a long one yesterday, we’ll be doing the same today. Barring some decision to carry this sucker onto a fourth day (doubtful), this one is bound to last into the wee hours, for sure.

Not sure how many were following our coverage last night, as I’m guessing most were more frequently checking in on Phil Ivey’s successful quest to win his sixth WSOP bracelet over in Event No. 8, the $2,500 No-Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball. We were occasionally looking in on that one, too, often checking the live blog as well as Bluff’s streaming of the event once it got down to heads up between Ivey and John Monnette.

Those who did follow our coverage of Event No. 10 were able to track the event very closely, as we had a couple of bloggers (FerricRamsium and myself), and three solid field reporters (Mickey, Neil, and Mark) -- plenty of eyes to capture much of the action. Mickey has a particular ability and predilection for chip counting, and so we were able to keep those figures accurately updated throughout the night.

At one point in the evening, Mickey was asking me about where he could see B.J. Nemeth’s WSOP photo blog over on PokerRoad. Someone had told him there was a picture of him on there, and he wanted to see it. I told him where to go -- just click on the “PokerRoad Nation” tab on the site’s main page and go to “Photo Blog” -- and soon he found his picture.

As Mickey was looking at the picture of himself counting chips during a break at the final table of Event No. 6, the $10,000 World Championship Seven-Card Stud event, I noticed him lean forward with his pen and again start counting the chips on the screen. Couldn’t help but smile at the sight of him going back over his work.

I quickly tapped the shoulder of FerricRamsium, an excellent photographer as well as blogger, who was sitting on my other side. I told him he had to get a picture of Mickey, and he obliged.

We got a good laugh out of the pic. As I told Pokerati Dan, who wandered over to our corner of media row somewhere around 2 a.m., it’s a conceptual piece.

“What do you mean?” asked Dan, a bit incredulously.

“It depicts the postmodern condition,” I explained. “We are watching ourselves -- or trying to, anyway. Mickey’s double-checking of his work is an emblem of our constant uncertainty, our need to reestablish meaning for our lives and our inability not to second-guess...”

Dan shook his head. “Someone has been working too long,” he responded. I persisted. “The conceptual depth of this picture is so extensive I cannot possibly explain it in... in... in 140 characters.”

Dan laughed and went back up to his spot on the other end of media row.

I was just kidding around, but I thought again of that maddening question Twitter keeps asking us, over and over and over again: “What are you doing?” And the empty box that appears underneath. How do we fill it up?

Hopefully with something fun and meaningful. I know that’s how I filled it last night.

See how I answer the question today by following our coverage of the final two tables over on PokerNews.

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2009 WSOP, Day 8: Isolation

Date: Thu, Jun 4, 2009 Internet

It was a long, somewhat arduous night-slash-morning for yr humble gumshoe. As I mentioned yesterday, there were seven different World Series of Poker events going on at the Rio, and I was assigned to the last one of the day, the $2,500 Pot-Limit Hold’em/Pot Limit Omaha (Event No. 10).

My event started a little after five o’clock in the afternoon, and it was past 3 a.m. by the time we were done. The tourney was tucked way back in the far right quadrant of the Brasilia room. I had just one reporter with me (Matt, who was terrific), so we were feeling pretty isolated back there, particularly during the very last level when all of the other events had already wrapped up.

Right near my station, Daniel Negreanu was seated at a table that didn’t break for the entire eight levels, so I basically got to witness fairly closely his play and all of his table talk for most of the evening. Also frequently got to experience a bit of claustrophobia as throngs of spectators intermittently gathered near Negreanu’s table. Had one elderly lady ask me if I had a piece of paper that she could take and get him to sign. Then she asked if I had a pen. Then if I had a book or something upon which he could write. I think I supplied a piece of scrap paper, but no other materials with which to bother the poker player while he was trying to play. But she succeeded in her quest, nonetheless, and Negreanu happily obliged her with an autograph.

He also was quite sociable with some of the more inebriated fans who occasionally wanted to engage him in conversation, coming over and posing for pictures with a couple of liquored-up ladies at one point. I remember somewhere in there as they were praising him one of them hollering “Hellmuth is such a douchebag!” to which Negreanu laughed loudly. “How many of those have you had tonight?” he asked. “Just five,” was the reply.

I reported a couple of Negreanu’s hands, but didn’t overdo it as I didn’t want the blog to become All Danny All the Time. As his Twitter followers know, he had a good day, chipping up past 80,000 (from the starting stack of 7,500), but slipping at the end back to around 50,000.

Incidentally, that Rule No. 88 -- the “Approved Electronic Device Rule” -- is not being enforced whatsoever at the WSOP. Not as it is written, anyway. The rule says players can use electronic devices as long as they cannot access the internet, send text messages, or have any sort of external communication. The rule also states (in bold, no less) that “iPhones, iTouch, Treos, Blackberrys, and other similar devices will not be allowed at any time.”

In other words, it does not say the devices can be used when the player is not in the hand. It says the devices “will not be allowed at any time.” But like I say, no one is enforcing this rule at all. And if I had to estimate, I’d say at each table probably seven or eight of the nine players will pull out their iPhones or Blackberrys at some point after they have folded a hand, with some keeping them out constantly -- even, in some cases (it appears), when they are in hands, too.

I reported on one hand last night in which Chris “Jesus” Ferguson let David “Chino” Rheem steal his big blind, all the while studying his iPhone as the hand took place. After he mucked, Andy Bloch asked Ferguson what game he was playing. “Chinese,” said Ferguson. I walked behind him and took a peek over the long-haired, hat-wearing player’s shoulder, and sure enough he was assembling hands on some Chinese poker application for the iPhone. Not sure if he was playing against others or not, but I’m going to guess he was.

I actually don’t feel that strongly one way or the other about players using these devices at the tables, as long as it doesn’t obviously affect the actual play or give anybody an unfair advantage. As a reporter, I have no problem at all with people following their favorite players on Twitter in addition to (or even instead of) my reports on PokerNews. Especially on a Day 1, when we aren’t always going to be tracking chip counts for the entire field the way we will try to do from Day 2 onward, it’s pretty cool for fans to be able to follow their faves that way.

I do have a couple of issues, though, with the non-enforcement of Rule No. 88. One is simply the hypocrisy of having the rule and not implementing it. Why include it at all if you aren’t going to stick to it? The only part of the rule that I’ve seen enforced is the part where it says once players reach the money they have to put all of the devices away (even the iPods and non-internet-accessing devices). Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of words. And having a rule and not enforcing it just undermines the significance of all of the other rules, too.

The other issue I have is less poker-specific and more an observation about our culture, generally speaking. I got me an iPhone a week or so before coming out to Vegas this summer, and I definitely like being in constant contact with Vera and other family and friends. But I generally keep the sucker in my pocket. Especially if I’m with others.

Seems like everybody everywhere is no longer looking at each other, talking to each other, experiencing each other’s presence. Instead, everyone is walking around with head down, busily jabbing at these little machines. Connecting with others, I guess, but not the ones right before them.

Be nice if people would look at each other now and then. Hey, we’re playing poker here! It’s a game -- we’re competing against each other. Let’s pretend we exist in the same time and place for a while. Let’s acknowledge each other’s existence. Let’s get together, people.

World can be too damn lonely a place otherwise.

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2009 WSOP, Day 7: Arm Yourself, Bomb

Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2009 Internet

Tuesday was the first day of the WSOP that I did not stick my fedora into the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino. Instead, I mostly just hung out at the home-away-from-home, catching up on some reading and writing, and heading out just to grab a few groceries at the Food4Less. Oh, I did run on the treadmill, too. Am keeping that up, having only missed one day thus far (Monday) in favor of that cheeseburger discussed in yesterday’s post.

Tried to stay up a little later last night than usual, since my workday won’t be starting until later this afternoon when I begin covering the first day of Event No. 10, the $2,500 buy-in Pot-Limit Hold’em/Pot-Limit Omaha event. Probably looking at working at least until 3 a.m., so it’ll be a late one for yr humble gumshoe.

In order to stay awake, I hopped online a little after midnight looking for a movie. Actually considered David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977), which I last saw at a midnight movie screening some two decades ago (or more). (Available here.) Watched the first five minutes and decided maybe I wasn’t quite in the mood for the little chickens that you cut up just like regular chickens, the lady in the radiator, the baby (shudder), and the rest.

Instead I opted for Dark Star (1974), John Carpenter’s hilarious sci-fi comedy which can be seen online over at AMCTV. Seen it a hundred times before, of course, but it still cracks me up. Was weirdly identifying with the characters, too, stuck in space all alone, away from family and friends, performing their tasks. Might’ve also been identifying with Bomb #20 there at the end a little, too, who ultimately decides “the only thing that exists is myself.”

When the movie was done, I checked in once more over on Poker News’ Live Reporting page to see how the WSOP was going without me. Kind of a weird day over at the Rio, schedule-wise, in that there were five events going on, but no final tables. Indeed, we’ve completed a full week of play (seven days), but only three bracelets have been awarded.

And today the big pile-up occurs. I remember noting a few weeks ago how June 3rd looked like an especially crazy day, with seven different events scheduled, including three final tables. Apparently somewhere along the way the plan was revised to try to finish Event No. 4, that $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em “Stimulus Special” event, yesterday, but it was already 10 p.m. or so when they reached the final nine there, so they are going to do that one today.

Two other final tables will play out today as well -- Event No. 5, the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha, and Event No. 6, the $10,000 World Championship Seven-Card Stud. The plan had been to do the live streaming of the final tables for both Event No. 4 and Event No. 5, but I don’t think they’ll be able to do that, since both of those final tables are set to begin at 2 p.m. this afternoon. Gotta believe they’ll go with the hold’em event and thus the PLO guys are SOL.

The stud final table was never going to be televised anyway, so they actually stopped with 11 players remaining in that one. They get going again at 1 p.m. today and will play it to the conclusion.

Meanwhile, four other events will be playing, too. Both Event No. 7, a $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em event, and Event No. 8, the $2,500 No-Limit Deuce-to-Seven Lowball event, will start their second days today. They both appear set to begin at 2 p.m. as well. Event No. 9, the $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Handed event, begins its first day of action at noon. And as I mentioned, my event starts at 5 p.m., Event No. 10, the $2,500 Pot-Limit Hold’em/Pot-Limit Omaha event. Or, as some call it, “HA.”

“HA” might be what we’re saying later today when contemplating where the hell to put all of these players (never mind the reporters). Seems to me we’re looking at a 99%-plus probability that the Series is going to deviate from its normal orbit and spiral toward the sun, causing an eventual supernova.

All very intriguing. I wish I had more time to discuss this matter before I detonate.

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