WSOP Trip Report Day 3
DAY 3 - Saturday
Saturday was looking to be pretty empty for me. I’d hoped to be playing in the second day of the 2K WSOP no-limit event, but really, that was a bit unrealistic. To make matters worse, there was no Leafs game tonight to watch. No tournaments at the Mirage or the Bellagio, either. At this point, I didn’t know about the $225 buy-in second-chance late-night Binion’s tournament for WSOP players. Or, maybe I did, but I blocked it out. I slept in until noon, and then did what I always did, which is breakfast at Binion’s.
Off to the Nugget for some daylight 20/40. The poolside view was absolutely spectacular, and more than a little distracting. Throughout my trip, I kept ending up at the same table as a very nice, very old, black man—regardless of where I was. The first hand I’d played against him I had pocket kings. Smooth-called his preflop raise, check-raised the turn, won a nice pot at showdown, and he’d been pleasantly leery of me ever since. He was at the table, so I had a nice afternoon of solid poker and good conversation. We were cursed with inexperienced dealer after inexperienced dealer, which I’ve mentioned is a bit of a problem at the Nugget. To further complicate matters, this particular 20/40 table had a guy in the ten seat who was acting as a surrogate dealer. He was doing everything but actually dealing the cards. I mean, he would not let up on these guys. They took a seat in the box and spent 20 minutes in hell. The surrogate dealer wasn’t particularly rude, but man, he was condescending. When he started in about the precise length of time a dealer should scramble the cards before riffling, I’d had just about enough, despite a pretty successful session.
Fortunately, a guy named Davis was two to my left. He was a pretty solid player, so that wouldn’t be such a fortunate situation if not for the fact that he was a very nice guy. I asked him if he knew of any tournaments happening that night—I was kind of a tournament junkie, hell, I AM a tournament junkie—and he told me about a tournament that he and his friends were going to at the Orleans. $130 buy-in, plus rebuys and an add-on. He then asked me if I wanted to catch a ride with them. Hmmmm.
The Orleans is a bit farther away from downtown than the Strip, I think. Cab rides weren’t exactly killing me, but at $25 or so each way in a cab, a ride would be a welcome situation. Davis knew I’d have at least 1K USD in cash in my pocket. So did his friend Mark, who was also at the table, and who was also going to the Orleans. The desert wasteland wasn’t more than a stone’s throw away. So, from a poker standpoint, I’m risking 1K to win a $25 pot. Never a good idea. But, you know, sometimes you just have to go with your gut instinct about a person’s character. Also, I was in Vegas alone because my friends couldn’t/didn’t want to come up with the scratch in time, and I’d resolved to save a trip to Vegas with my girlfriend for a time when I wouldn’t be so preoccupied with poker. That’ll be happening at roughly the same time that hell freezes over. I missed the type of camaraderie that happens away from the poker table, and these guys actually reminded me a lot of my friends from home.
So, I took him up on his offer, and we left shortly thereafter. Me, in a rental car with three guys from Seattle: Davis, Mark, and Howie. Along the way, Davis mentioned that I was a pretty trusting guy, to have gotten myself into a car with a bunch of cash and three strangers. I laughed nervously. Well, my instincts were right, these guys were just out for fun and adventure in Vegas, like me. Davis got a call on his cell from another friend who was with them in Vegas, and Davis informed him that they’d picked up a ‘poor lonely Canadian’ along the way. I’ve never heard myself described in quite that way before, and I got a pretty big kick out of it. Howie, as it turned out, was something of a high roller in a casino called the Luxor, I think. He was fully comped there for his entire stay. He bets a LOT on the Superbowl there every year, and he’s won for the past three. I think he said he won 60K there on the Superbowl last year alone, betting on everything from the coin toss to whether the next play would be a rush or a pass. I don’t know much about football, and sports betting isn’t my thing, but I couldn’t help but to be impressed when he told me in a very humble way that he gets invitations from the Luxor management (who also own Caesar’s if I’m not mistaken) to attend all the big fights, etc… free of charge. Him and his friends. I think I could have gotten into some kind of party at some kind of club with him and his friends that night, but I had to rest up for the 1.5K WSOP Limit tourney the following day.
We bought into the Orleans tournament and went to dinner. A note on the Orleans: not the best place to play poker. Kind of a dive. Environment, volume, etc… all of it no good. The only saving grace was the outfits that the waitresses were wearing, or the lack thereof. And you know, sometimes that’s good enough. Over dinner, we decided to take a piece of each other. If any one of us made the money, the winner would take 79%, and give 7% to each of the other three guys.
Davis and I exchanged cell phone numbers so we could track each other down, and off we went to play. I knew for a fact that Davis and Mark were good players, after sitting at the 20/40 with them for a while. After talking about poker with Mark, I had a hunch that (next to me, of course) he was the favourite to win out of the four of us. However, about 5 minutes before the tournament, Mark discovered that he’d lost his marker. For those who don’t know, a marker is a stone, or a special chip, or whatever you please, to put on top of your hole cards when you’re in a hand. It’s how you protect your hand, as it prevents the dealer from accidentally sweeping your cards into the muck. I just use a chip from my stack if I’m in a hand, as most people do.
Mark’s marker was an ounce of solid gold, worth about $600. I won’t get into the relative wisdom of using a marker that has potentially more value than all of the chips in front of you at any given time. I was just worried about the fact that this loss would affect his game, which it did. He was out, and fast. He looked all over the poker room for it, and he was considering asking management if he could look at the security tapes to see if anyone stole it. I highly doubt that they’d have let him.
Although it was never said, or even implied in any way, I couldn’t help thinking that my three new friends might have thought that I had stolen that marker. Of course, I hadn’t, but I was the variable, and Mark was able to keep track of the marker for years and it was there before I arrived, and it was gone after I showed up and hung out with them for a while.
Davis went out after Mark. I was at a table from hell. Not because the competition was especially tough—on the contrary, I’d heard that the field was generally weak at the Orleans and was happy to see it proven time and time again—but because the guy to my left would not stop talking. He sounded exactly like Teddy KGB from Rounders. At first I thought it was funny, but after a while, it wasn’t funny at all. Previous to this experience, I thought that the ‘worst accent ever attempted in a feature film’ award went hands-down to John Malkovich for Rounders. I mean, he was awesome, but who really talks like that? The guy who was to my left really talks like that, and Malkovich gets the last laugh in my book. Unlike Teddy KGB, however, this particular Mad Russian was boring as hell and almost indecipherable. So, I couldn’t really ignore him, because my polite Canadian instincts kicked in, and I was involuntarily making an effort to understand every word he said so I could prevent myself from being a very ignorant, very rude person who smiles and nods when he can’t understand a ‘foreigner’s’ accent, completely oblivious to every word that’s being said.
Eventually I gave up, pulled my hat lower, and stared at my chips without moving. A guy can only do so much.
I went out in third place of the four of us. I didn’t see a hand that looked much different from Q 3 offsuit, and that combined with the constant stream of chatter from my left beat me into submission. I really have to start bringing a Discman to poker tables, for just these occasions, which happen more often than I thought.
I bid farewell to Davis and Mark, and wished Howie luck. I had to get back to my room to rest up for the next day. Davis said he’d get a hold of me if Howie made the money, and I completely believed him. (Earlier, when we had to buy in to the tournament, he gave me his I.D. and $130 cash to buy in for him in case he missed his spot while he was in the washroom. I guess trust works both ways….) Of course, I didn’t go back to my hotel room; it was only around ten o’clock. I went to the Golden Nugget to play in a $125 single-table tournament. I got down to three people in this tournament, and we played three-handed for a really long time. Neither of the other two players mentioned a deal, and since it was a $125 instead of a $225, I didn’t either. All or nothing was what I wanted in this one.
We played three-handed for so long in fact that the blinds escalated at a bizarre rate. Apparently the organizers of these single-table tournaments had worked it out so that no tournament could go on for too long, so they could start another one and get their cut. After just over two hours, the blinds were something like 1000/2000, with only 15,000 chips in play at the table. Really, at this point, we should have made a deal, but oh well. Long story short, I moved in from the small blind after the button folded, with pocket fours. The big blind shrugged and called me with A6o. None of us were shortstacked at the time, but in a way, we all were. So, it was time to let fate decide.
Fate f***ed me. He didn’t hit a six, he didn’t hit an ace. The board was 838JJ. His two pair, ace kicker, beat my two pair, four kicker. That was that. The only other part of the tournament worth mentioning was the fact that the guy on my right in the early stages would not stop talking. He didn’t even sound like Teddy KGB. He sounded like a guy who owed a lot of people money—including, apparently, the dealer who was working our satellite—and I have to say I’ve never been within two feet of a more annoying person in my life. I hope I don’t sound too smarmy, or conceited, or whatever. I don’t mean to be. It takes a lot to get under my skin. This guy was too much, though. The only thing I liked about him was the fact that he was out second. He was taking up WAY more than his fair share of room under the table, and he was constantly coughing and horking up phlegm in what was definitely my personal space. So, I just moved waaaaaaay back from the table whenever I wasn’t actively involved in a hand. Move in, check my cards, fold, move out. That’s how the first while went for me. And then he started to insinuate that I was moving waaaaaaaay back from the table so I could get a look at his hole cards, which wasn’t true at all, and I told him so. Then, every time he checked his cards, he made a big production out of disguising them from me. As if.
At one point, an older guy who I’d played with before came up and started talking to him. The conversation went like this. With a fake smile on his face, and a very firm ‘friendly’ clasp of the arm, the older guy said: “Hey, Jimmy. Nice to see ya. You don’t know me, but you know my brother real well, you remember, Jerry from Chicago? Sure, you remember him. My brother told me about you, and a friend of mine at my table told me you were over here. Why don’t you come talk to me when this is over, Jimmy? You play real good, though. Make sure you win this. Make sure you come find me, Jimmy.†With that fake smile still on his face, he walked away, and Mr. Phlegm—Jimmy, I guess—looked pretty shaken up. He busted out shortly after, calling all-in with A T offsuit vs. A K. After he lost, he talked about how every time he makes a move he runs into a big hand.
Calling an all-in bet is the strangest damn ‘move’ I’ve ever heard made.
After busting out of the sit-and-go with my pair of fours, I headed back to my room for real this time. On my way out, I ran into Mark, from Seattle, who was sitting at the 10/20. He told me that Howie didn’t get close to the money; he busted out very soon after I did. So, no 7% for me. However, he also told me that he found his 1 oz. solid gold coin marker. It had somehow gotten wedged deep down in some strange part of his wallet.
So, even though I never had any reason to be paranoid in the first place, I rested easy that night knowing that there weren’t three guys out there with a lingering suspicion in their minds about me being in posession of Mark’s marker. I went to sleep with high hopes for the 1.5K Limit event the next day.
Saturday was looking to be pretty empty for me. I’d hoped to be playing in the second day of the 2K WSOP no-limit event, but really, that was a bit unrealistic. To make matters worse, there was no Leafs game tonight to watch. No tournaments at the Mirage or the Bellagio, either. At this point, I didn’t know about the $225 buy-in second-chance late-night Binion’s tournament for WSOP players. Or, maybe I did, but I blocked it out. I slept in until noon, and then did what I always did, which is breakfast at Binion’s.
Off to the Nugget for some daylight 20/40. The poolside view was absolutely spectacular, and more than a little distracting. Throughout my trip, I kept ending up at the same table as a very nice, very old, black man—regardless of where I was. The first hand I’d played against him I had pocket kings. Smooth-called his preflop raise, check-raised the turn, won a nice pot at showdown, and he’d been pleasantly leery of me ever since. He was at the table, so I had a nice afternoon of solid poker and good conversation. We were cursed with inexperienced dealer after inexperienced dealer, which I’ve mentioned is a bit of a problem at the Nugget. To further complicate matters, this particular 20/40 table had a guy in the ten seat who was acting as a surrogate dealer. He was doing everything but actually dealing the cards. I mean, he would not let up on these guys. They took a seat in the box and spent 20 minutes in hell. The surrogate dealer wasn’t particularly rude, but man, he was condescending. When he started in about the precise length of time a dealer should scramble the cards before riffling, I’d had just about enough, despite a pretty successful session.
Fortunately, a guy named Davis was two to my left. He was a pretty solid player, so that wouldn’t be such a fortunate situation if not for the fact that he was a very nice guy. I asked him if he knew of any tournaments happening that night—I was kind of a tournament junkie, hell, I AM a tournament junkie—and he told me about a tournament that he and his friends were going to at the Orleans. $130 buy-in, plus rebuys and an add-on. He then asked me if I wanted to catch a ride with them. Hmmmm.
The Orleans is a bit farther away from downtown than the Strip, I think. Cab rides weren’t exactly killing me, but at $25 or so each way in a cab, a ride would be a welcome situation. Davis knew I’d have at least 1K USD in cash in my pocket. So did his friend Mark, who was also at the table, and who was also going to the Orleans. The desert wasteland wasn’t more than a stone’s throw away. So, from a poker standpoint, I’m risking 1K to win a $25 pot. Never a good idea. But, you know, sometimes you just have to go with your gut instinct about a person’s character. Also, I was in Vegas alone because my friends couldn’t/didn’t want to come up with the scratch in time, and I’d resolved to save a trip to Vegas with my girlfriend for a time when I wouldn’t be so preoccupied with poker. That’ll be happening at roughly the same time that hell freezes over. I missed the type of camaraderie that happens away from the poker table, and these guys actually reminded me a lot of my friends from home.
So, I took him up on his offer, and we left shortly thereafter. Me, in a rental car with three guys from Seattle: Davis, Mark, and Howie. Along the way, Davis mentioned that I was a pretty trusting guy, to have gotten myself into a car with a bunch of cash and three strangers. I laughed nervously. Well, my instincts were right, these guys were just out for fun and adventure in Vegas, like me. Davis got a call on his cell from another friend who was with them in Vegas, and Davis informed him that they’d picked up a ‘poor lonely Canadian’ along the way. I’ve never heard myself described in quite that way before, and I got a pretty big kick out of it. Howie, as it turned out, was something of a high roller in a casino called the Luxor, I think. He was fully comped there for his entire stay. He bets a LOT on the Superbowl there every year, and he’s won for the past three. I think he said he won 60K there on the Superbowl last year alone, betting on everything from the coin toss to whether the next play would be a rush or a pass. I don’t know much about football, and sports betting isn’t my thing, but I couldn’t help but to be impressed when he told me in a very humble way that he gets invitations from the Luxor management (who also own Caesar’s if I’m not mistaken) to attend all the big fights, etc… free of charge. Him and his friends. I think I could have gotten into some kind of party at some kind of club with him and his friends that night, but I had to rest up for the 1.5K WSOP Limit tourney the following day.
We bought into the Orleans tournament and went to dinner. A note on the Orleans: not the best place to play poker. Kind of a dive. Environment, volume, etc… all of it no good. The only saving grace was the outfits that the waitresses were wearing, or the lack thereof. And you know, sometimes that’s good enough. Over dinner, we decided to take a piece of each other. If any one of us made the money, the winner would take 79%, and give 7% to each of the other three guys.
Davis and I exchanged cell phone numbers so we could track each other down, and off we went to play. I knew for a fact that Davis and Mark were good players, after sitting at the 20/40 with them for a while. After talking about poker with Mark, I had a hunch that (next to me, of course) he was the favourite to win out of the four of us. However, about 5 minutes before the tournament, Mark discovered that he’d lost his marker. For those who don’t know, a marker is a stone, or a special chip, or whatever you please, to put on top of your hole cards when you’re in a hand. It’s how you protect your hand, as it prevents the dealer from accidentally sweeping your cards into the muck. I just use a chip from my stack if I’m in a hand, as most people do.
Mark’s marker was an ounce of solid gold, worth about $600. I won’t get into the relative wisdom of using a marker that has potentially more value than all of the chips in front of you at any given time. I was just worried about the fact that this loss would affect his game, which it did. He was out, and fast. He looked all over the poker room for it, and he was considering asking management if he could look at the security tapes to see if anyone stole it. I highly doubt that they’d have let him.
Although it was never said, or even implied in any way, I couldn’t help thinking that my three new friends might have thought that I had stolen that marker. Of course, I hadn’t, but I was the variable, and Mark was able to keep track of the marker for years and it was there before I arrived, and it was gone after I showed up and hung out with them for a while.
Davis went out after Mark. I was at a table from hell. Not because the competition was especially tough—on the contrary, I’d heard that the field was generally weak at the Orleans and was happy to see it proven time and time again—but because the guy to my left would not stop talking. He sounded exactly like Teddy KGB from Rounders. At first I thought it was funny, but after a while, it wasn’t funny at all. Previous to this experience, I thought that the ‘worst accent ever attempted in a feature film’ award went hands-down to John Malkovich for Rounders. I mean, he was awesome, but who really talks like that? The guy who was to my left really talks like that, and Malkovich gets the last laugh in my book. Unlike Teddy KGB, however, this particular Mad Russian was boring as hell and almost indecipherable. So, I couldn’t really ignore him, because my polite Canadian instincts kicked in, and I was involuntarily making an effort to understand every word he said so I could prevent myself from being a very ignorant, very rude person who smiles and nods when he can’t understand a ‘foreigner’s’ accent, completely oblivious to every word that’s being said.
Eventually I gave up, pulled my hat lower, and stared at my chips without moving. A guy can only do so much.
I went out in third place of the four of us. I didn’t see a hand that looked much different from Q 3 offsuit, and that combined with the constant stream of chatter from my left beat me into submission. I really have to start bringing a Discman to poker tables, for just these occasions, which happen more often than I thought.
I bid farewell to Davis and Mark, and wished Howie luck. I had to get back to my room to rest up for the next day. Davis said he’d get a hold of me if Howie made the money, and I completely believed him. (Earlier, when we had to buy in to the tournament, he gave me his I.D. and $130 cash to buy in for him in case he missed his spot while he was in the washroom. I guess trust works both ways….) Of course, I didn’t go back to my hotel room; it was only around ten o’clock. I went to the Golden Nugget to play in a $125 single-table tournament. I got down to three people in this tournament, and we played three-handed for a really long time. Neither of the other two players mentioned a deal, and since it was a $125 instead of a $225, I didn’t either. All or nothing was what I wanted in this one.
We played three-handed for so long in fact that the blinds escalated at a bizarre rate. Apparently the organizers of these single-table tournaments had worked it out so that no tournament could go on for too long, so they could start another one and get their cut. After just over two hours, the blinds were something like 1000/2000, with only 15,000 chips in play at the table. Really, at this point, we should have made a deal, but oh well. Long story short, I moved in from the small blind after the button folded, with pocket fours. The big blind shrugged and called me with A6o. None of us were shortstacked at the time, but in a way, we all were. So, it was time to let fate decide.
Fate f***ed me. He didn’t hit a six, he didn’t hit an ace. The board was 838JJ. His two pair, ace kicker, beat my two pair, four kicker. That was that. The only other part of the tournament worth mentioning was the fact that the guy on my right in the early stages would not stop talking. He didn’t even sound like Teddy KGB. He sounded like a guy who owed a lot of people money—including, apparently, the dealer who was working our satellite—and I have to say I’ve never been within two feet of a more annoying person in my life. I hope I don’t sound too smarmy, or conceited, or whatever. I don’t mean to be. It takes a lot to get under my skin. This guy was too much, though. The only thing I liked about him was the fact that he was out second. He was taking up WAY more than his fair share of room under the table, and he was constantly coughing and horking up phlegm in what was definitely my personal space. So, I just moved waaaaaaay back from the table whenever I wasn’t actively involved in a hand. Move in, check my cards, fold, move out. That’s how the first while went for me. And then he started to insinuate that I was moving waaaaaaaay back from the table so I could get a look at his hole cards, which wasn’t true at all, and I told him so. Then, every time he checked his cards, he made a big production out of disguising them from me. As if.
At one point, an older guy who I’d played with before came up and started talking to him. The conversation went like this. With a fake smile on his face, and a very firm ‘friendly’ clasp of the arm, the older guy said: “Hey, Jimmy. Nice to see ya. You don’t know me, but you know my brother real well, you remember, Jerry from Chicago? Sure, you remember him. My brother told me about you, and a friend of mine at my table told me you were over here. Why don’t you come talk to me when this is over, Jimmy? You play real good, though. Make sure you win this. Make sure you come find me, Jimmy.†With that fake smile still on his face, he walked away, and Mr. Phlegm—Jimmy, I guess—looked pretty shaken up. He busted out shortly after, calling all-in with A T offsuit vs. A K. After he lost, he talked about how every time he makes a move he runs into a big hand.
Calling an all-in bet is the strangest damn ‘move’ I’ve ever heard made.
After busting out of the sit-and-go with my pair of fours, I headed back to my room for real this time. On my way out, I ran into Mark, from Seattle, who was sitting at the 10/20. He told me that Howie didn’t get close to the money; he busted out very soon after I did. So, no 7% for me. However, he also told me that he found his 1 oz. solid gold coin marker. It had somehow gotten wedged deep down in some strange part of his wallet.
So, even though I never had any reason to be paranoid in the first place, I rested easy that night knowing that there weren’t three guys out there with a lingering suspicion in their minds about me being in posession of Mark’s marker. I went to sleep with high hopes for the 1.5K Limit event the next day.
Comments
Although I'd agree that this one is high up there on the list, I think that another candidate worth serious consideration has got to be Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
ScottyZ
Touche.
esool:
Thanks dude. I managed to get myself into some quasi-interesting situations, and for poker players, poker situations are pretty much always interesting...
eh
gonna read this again
thx all_aces
annie duke
Well, the URL for Day 1 was
http://pokerforum.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=412
and for Day 3 it was
http://pokerforum.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=414
so, as they say, you can do the math to find Day 2.
Also, there is a WSOP Trip Report: Day 6. Finding this thread is left as an exercise for the reader.
I should point out a pretty large glitch (well, it's not necessarily a glitch) in the Forum Search feature. Unfortunately, it seems that the search will not find posts from too far back in the past. I believe the forum search can't find posts from PokerForum Version 1.0 (We are currently in Version 2.2)
A Brief History of PokerForum.ca
Version 1.0: Old school. I wasn't paying attention, so I don't know what the forum software actually was.
Version 2.0: Sloth upgraded the forum to VBulletin 3.x. One user hated the new version, everyone else loved it. ScottyZ tells 623 users where to find the "quote" button in the new version. Sloth installs cool Poker Suits Smiley Module.
Version 2.1: Upgraded to VBulletin 3.x: Santa Smiley Module
Version 2.2: Some bald woman cried out "STOP THE INSANITY" and the Santa Smiley Module was uninstalled. Poker Suits Smiley Module re-installed. Sloth notes to self in a Mr. T style voice: "I ain't gonna let no FOO... mess up my smileys...again. [growls]"
ScottyZ
Use this search string in google and you can find them all.
"WSOP Trip Report" site:pokerforum.ca