Hugo's Blogspotting: 19 July

1st Place is all that Matters

We all know what it’s like to lose, but what about if you are knocked out of the Main Event of the World Series? Tony Holden writes an amusing entry on his biggerdeal.com website reflecting on the paradox of being knocked out of the Big One in the money. Fellow scribe David Flusfeder, who normally writes for the Daily Telegraph, did very well this year; not only did he get PokerStars to put him in, but he went deep finishing in 321st place, which was good for $39,445. Holden writes,

"What an achievement – the best ever, to my knowledge – by a British poker-writer!"

Flusfeder is “quietly satisfied”, and why not? He’s won almost £20,000, not bad for someone who is essentially an “amateur” – or is he?

"As he waited in line to pick up his prize money, David told me, he got annoyed by people saying ‘Congratulations!’ Commiserations were what he wanted at that particular moment"

Ah, that’s a true sign of a “player”. Not happy unless they win the whole damn thing. Well said Flusfeder. Apart from the words of congratulations usually being a pre-amble to a nipping, they’re just bloody patronizing aren’t they? “Well done for getting so far” usually translates as, “Wow, you were a million to one, HTF did you get in the cash???”

What about the professional point of view? Tony, now joined by his son Ben, bumps into Poker Verdict’s very own Neil Channing:

"En route to the elevators we bumped into Neil ‘Bad Beat’ Channing, clutching a white plastic bag. It was around 1 am. Had Day 4 just finished ? Or had Neil been knocked out?

The latter, it transpired with an authentic ‘Bad Beat’ grimace. After a terrific four-day performance, Neil had just finished in the low 100s, with $58,570 to show for it. ‘It’s here,’ he said gloomily, ‘here in this bag.’ Ben and I squeezed it longingly."

Standard stuff from Neil who, being the true pro that he is, expects nothing less than first place. Of course, being the grinder that he also is, Neil can’t help but appreciate the extra readies that he has accumulated too, thus resulting in conflicting feelings vis a vis the Big Show. He knows it’s his best ever performance in this tournament and that there should be a small part of him that’s happy about that, but…but…it’s just never good when you’re knocked out of a tournament, whether it’s the Amazon Room in Vegas or a rainy Thursday night in Luton. Unlucky Neil, you’re still the best.

What about the maverick gambler? Over to Tony again who tried to cheer up John Duthie aka Europe’s Mr. Big:

"The first Poker Million winner, and founder-director of the EPT, had played well enough to get into the money - $25,101 for coming around 500th out of the 6,358 starters in the 2007 ‘main event’. But he was far from happy about it… I made a futile attempt to cheer him up.

"At least you’ve got the 25K," I ventured. Infected by the local lingo, I even added: "‘You played great."

"I don’t want the frigging 25K," he snapped back. "I’d give it up right now to be back in that tournament." Then he stalked off."

The Sickest Hand Ever

Talking of John Duthie, there is a great story about him written by Victoria Coren in the Guardian. Although not strictly speaking a blog, Vicky’s regular poker column is excellent and I’m including it because, a) I feel like it and can do what I want, and b) it can be read online here.

Anyway, she tells us about a great hand that Europe's Mr. Big played in a big cash game at the Venetian. John is fast becoming a legend in Nevada and winning a monster pot with Queen high is one of the reasons why. Apparently after it was over Phil Laak insisted on putting every detail of the hand including suits etc into his phone because he was so blown away by the coup. As Vicky writes before she describes what happened,

"The following is a hand worth noting for its incredible flair, its disregard of premium hands, and the excellent strong play of both parties. But be warned: do not try this at home."

What is also great about the whole thing is John’s laconic analysis of how it all went down. Knowing John I guarantee you he is not joking when he says,

"I decided he wouldn't move all-in on the turn with king high - because that hand is just far too strong."

You also get Lessons Here

Sticking with the Brits in Las Vegas during the WSOP theme there is a great account by Karl Mahrenholz on the Hit Squad site of his attempt to win the Bellagio Cup WPT event.

Karl finds himself in a great situation when, after loads of pre-flop action, he turns his Aces over to find he’s up against pocket Jacks and AK. Lah-ver-ly, ship it, send it etc etc. Except that the flop comes down J J 4.

Now that’s unlucky and the last thing you need to hear now is the woman who won the hand talking some rubbish about how she felt she was going to win. Not only this, but it turns out you also get lessons at this table as Karl hears her telling her friend,

"he didn't have to play it badly, he could have seen a flop and passed when the 2 jacks came"

If that’s not bad enough she then has the cheek to say to him,

"I think it's really important to review hands that you lose to see how you could have played them better, what do you think?"

Talk about a rubdown. How Karl managed such a restrained reply I’ll never know,

"I told her I wasn't going to comment as I wasn't sure if she was being serious...she assured me she was."

Bluescouse trying to Get Out of It

Back home and bluescouse has gone from playing $250/$500 blinds to depositing £150 across Betfair and Littlewoods. How the mighty have fallen! From recent posts it seems he had a load of money saved up for buying a house plus money to furnish said house with and so on. Unfortunately I get the feeling that Ed will soon be in a house completely devoid of any furniture or fittings or even paint on the wall. He writes,

"i still have maybe £15k for household stuff so maybe i'll do without something."

That is assuming he still has the money to buy the actual house.

Philosophy of Brian Townsend

Bluescouse’s blog is a good illustration of the pressure of playing high stakes cash games and one player who knows all about that is Brian Townsend. His most recent entry is titled Good To Be Home. Unfortunately for Brian he managed to lose $2.2 million in the last two days he spent in Vegas. A fair amount of that in a failed bluff attempt at Bobby Baldwin when Baldwin held the nuts. He writes,

"What can I say other than I played bad and didn't think at all during the hand. It was like I was blinded and just couldn't stop bluffing."

Brian is philosophical though and goes on to list the pros and cons of playing live:

"1) The games were amazing. Online is so much tougher. You still have the Phil Ivey's and Patrick antonius's live but you get billionaires who have sold their businesses who are looking to have some fun. You do get some of this online but not nearly to the extent. They have no problem sitting and dropping a million or two…Online you don't get this as much since most of these billionaires bring money to gamble with to the casino but online they have to deposit and see how much they are losing. It's much easier to forget your losses live."

Brian is one of the biggest winners online and basically spends most of his time in front of a computer screen. I don’t personally know him or how he lives his life, but my deduction comes from point no.4 of what he likes about live play:

"4) The girls. Santa Barbara has amazing women but when their is a lot of money around beautiful women always seem to show up. Wow, their were some smoking women coming and going."

I’m guessing Brian doesn’t get out much. What about his dislikes about live poker?

"5) Sitting in chairs is very uncomfortable. Playing online is nice because I take my laptop and sit out on my patio. While live you are confined to one place."

Yeah, I know what you mean Brian, I don’t really like sitting in a chair to play poker either. I prefer lying down on the floor or even better, hanging upside down with my gravity boots and using the mouse on my ceiling.

Finally, you often hear people talk about how unreal Vegas is and how you just lose track of time and so on. I wonder if Brian felt the same way?

"6) Never going outside. Hotels are like little cities and if you don't make an effort to go outside you probably won't make it. I had 4 day stretches where I never saw the sun. It really wears on you after a while."

Hugo 'Chimney Sweep' Martin

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