Hugo's Blogspotting: 12 July

Robert Who?

In a small nod to the Horseshoe’s Wall of Fame this year the Amazon Room at the Rio has adorned the walls with big pictures of former Main Event champions. You look up and see them all looking down on you – Scotty, Stuey, Phil, Johnny, Doyle, Puggy.

We know ‘em all by first name basis, the poker culture being an informal one at the best of times. These men have all achieved the one thing all poker players dream about – winning the Big One. In these post-boom times maybe some of the older champs from the past are a little more under the radar than recent winners; I’m talking about players like Mansour Matloubi, Russ Hamilton, Hal Fowler, Hamid Dastmalchi, Jack Keller and Jim Bechtel.

But recent winners are tattooed permanently on our sick poker player brains – “Jesus”, “Fossilman”, Jamie Gold, Hachem, Moneymaker. These guys ploughed through bigger and bigger fields and won bigger and bigger money. Their faces instantly recognisable to every poker player on the planet. But wait, who’s that trying to get into the Amazon room? Over to Storms Reback at Pokerwire.com in a post titled No R-E-S-P-E-C-T at the 2007 WSOP:

“A short balding man with glasses was holding up the line. He had a woman at his side, and they were trying to talk their way into the room, but the security guard wasn’t having any of it.”

Storms continues...

“All Series long, the top pros have enjoyed unfettered access inside the Amazon Room. They can go anywhere they want whenever they want. Uninvited, Phil Hellmuth stepped onto the stage at the final table of the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event to wish Doyle Brunson good luck in his attempt to win his record-tying eleventh gold bracelet. Scotty Nguyen, Phil Laak, and Humberto Brenes seemed to pop their heads into the Media Room on a regular basis.”

So who is this balding guy that the security guard won’t let in? None other than former Main Event winner Robert Varkonyi. Storms lets the guard know that he’s barring entry to a former world champ, but still the jobsworth is unsure. Jeez, all this little guy wearing spectacles wants to do is go into the room and have a look around. Reback finishes the story:

“Varkonyi finally stepped past the security guard into the room and pointed at the twenty-foot-tall picture of himself hanging above the security guard’s head. “See,” he said to the guard. “There I am. Now can I come in?”

Poker Verdict hails Varkonyi as the new People’s Champion. He’s become rather forgotten and overlooked as the game has grown into an obese monster. No cool nickname for our Robert and his victory was overshadowed by Hellmuth who claimed that he would shave his head if Varkonyi won. Robert’s great moment in the spotlight was immediately pushed aside with the spectacle of the Poker Brat undergoing the clippers. But did he really play that badly? Jamie Gold has been jeered at the Rio this year and all anyone can say about him is that he’s a donk who got super-lucky, but even he seems to get more respect than Varkonyi. I mean, Greg Raymer was a patent lawyer before he won the Biggie fer chrissakes, but nobody ever calls him dull and boring. C’mon people, let’s give Varkonyi his dues. And look, who’s that sitting on 150,000 chips going into Day 3? None other that Robert Varkonyi.

Getting Knocked out of the Main Event can lead to Dangerous Behaviour

Doyle Brunson famously describes getting knocked out of the Main Event as “the worst moment of the year”. Mike May concurs with this sentiment and writes about getting knocked out of the Big One (this is the first time he’s not made it to Day 2 in seven years, unlucky Mike). He takes an honest look at how he lost his chips and there is a refreshing lack of moaning:

“I could use one of those 'I was trying to win the tournament and not just survive it' rationalizations, but I think that’s a cop-out.”

Mike knows this is the right attitude to take, but still notes the sense of disappointment that a poker player can feel on this day and the possible consequences of feeling sorry for yourself when you realize your chance of winning all the green and achieving poker immortality has gone down in flames. He writes:

“…sometimes when you’re not happy with yourself you’re not so concerned about taking care of yourself. 'Screw it!' you think. Who cares. Sure, you promised your son you wouldn’t drink this weekend, but since you already had one beer (it would have been rude not to) another one isn’t going to change anything. And yeah, now you’re drunk. You hate yourself so much for lying to your son, the only person who’s ever believed you, that you’re just plain numb by the time you use that stolen Unicef money to pay for the tranny hooker. Naturally, one thing leads to another, and before too long you think 'yeah I always did want to kill a hobo' and that’s when bad things start to happen.”

That hits the nail on the head. Great post.

Tao of Poker: Gus Hansen and Vinnie Vinh

To really get the flavour of this year’s World Series I suggest you go to the Tao of Poker. Pretty much every week it’s included in this blog round-up because basically it’s the best poker blog out there. It’s not been mentioned recently purely because I’ve featured it so much in the past, but also because this column would just end being a massive block of quote from the man they call Dr. Pauly. Anyway, according to Pauly, this year’s Series has been rather boring. He writes:

“I was worried that I had been here for too long that what used to seem interesting and fascinating was banal and uneventful. Maybe I'm officially jaded and can't motivate myself to find a compelling story for consumption of the folks following the Tao.”

Having said that, he still manages to fill his blog with a couple of good stories. In the post dated Thursday, July 12, 2007 he tells us about a hand he witnessed between Gus Hansen and an unknown player. Gus faces a huge all-in re-raise for 46k. As the ESPN cameras roll Gus finally takes a deep breath and makes the call. His opponent turns over A-J and Gus tells him he has a small pair – deuces to be exact. Gus’ deuces hold up and a big pot is shipped over to the Great Dane. Standard donkament stuff of course. Good as this is the best part is what Pauly overhears one of the drinks servers muttering:

“Sick fuckin' call. That guy is crazy. Who calls there with fuckin' deuces? Sick. Just sick. I don't know if he's a fuckin' moron or my hero."

Pauly has also been following the Vinnie Vinh story over the recent weeks. Vinnie has made the money twice in earlier tournaments, but has failed to show up the next day, leading to many jokes about how Vinh’s empty chair plays better than most of the other players. Once again he has made a Day 2, this time of the main event and once again he has not shown up. Many rumours abound of Vinnie’s bad habits and rehab; there is much talk of Stu Ungar No 2. Pauly has dug a little deeper into the story and quotes from a story by Lance over at thepokerbiz.com:

"I can't win," said Vinh. "If I win this year, I die. So I’m not gonna win."

When asked to elaborate what that meant Vinh was somewhat cryptic.

"These Vietnamese guys, they find me if I win," said Vinh, before sitting down to his stack of 3,200. "So I'm not going to win this year. Next year though, I win."

Pauly then tells us about an email he received not long after this from an anonymous source. He writes:

“The guy who emailed me said that he ran into a Vietnamese pro last week in Las Vegas. He had played in tournaments and side games with that pro and they were friendly enough that he could ask him about the Vinnie Vinh story. That's when the pro said to expect Vinh back during the main event because..."The people he owed money to would make sure he was there because that was the only way they ever figured to get any money from him."

Vinh was stuck with a couple of people including several well-known pros and bracelet winners. According to the email..."They have taken everything he owns, beaten him, locked him up, drugged him, chased him between Vegas and wherever he is from. They have also tried to make sure he has no money so he can't get anywhere... I think that he was locked up with no access to anything but drugs, including very little food."

Pauly notes that this could all be bullshit, but there’s certainly more to the Vinnie Vinh story than meets the eye. Last word to Pauly:

“Maybe he's not a complete junkie like we thought. Maybe his backers helped spin that story in the media to deflect their tactics in trying to get their money back.”

Tournaments have ruined Poker?

Gary Carson writes an interesting blog where he notes that:

“Poker used to be about gambling, and the gambling lifestyle was not the same as today's tournament lifestyle. Today poker players will travel long distances for a shot at getting on TV. It used to be that poker players would travel long distances for a shot at playing in a good game, it didn't even have to be a poker game.”

He then goes onto tell us about meeting Tom Cover, a professor at Stanford University, who many years ago did research in gambling related probability models. Carson was a grad student back then (1960s and early 70s) and didn’t play much poker then, but professor Cover would regularly fly to New York to play in a poker game with famous games player Oswald Jacoby. Jacoby wrote many books covering games such as Bridge, Gin, Poker and Backgammon. In fact, there is even a rule in Backgammon named after him, the Jacoby rule. You won’t be surprised to hear that Jacoby was the chief donator in this New York poker game. Times have changed and professional gamblers have their eyes set on different sights now. Carson writes:

“Gambling 30 years ago wasn't about winning tournaments and getting on TV, it was about finding a good game. These days getting on TV can pay off better than any gambling game is going to.”

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