Hugo's Blogspotting: 12 October

Nostalgia For An Age Yet To Come

Michael Craig gets nostalgic on us and posts the first thing he ever wrote about poker which was way back in ’93. For those of you who can’t even imagine a world without the internet this post is a very accurate description of what poker was like in downtown Las Vegas.

“After dinner, we checked out the poker room at the Fremont. A dingy little room, they had two $1-4 hold ‘em games with a seat open…

It was a very familiar group, mostly locals. The biggest talkers were seat four (a guy in a wheelchair), seat eight (a guy with a big tattoo on his chest), and seat nine (a guy with an eye patch). Between the war-gnarled veterans, Patch, and Chair, it looked like a poker game broke out in an infirmary.

There was one woman in the game, who looked vaguely like Jill Eichenberry (sic), if Jill had spent the last twenty years turning tricks.”

What a game huh? I suspect the average age of this school would be around 58 years old. I particularly like the reference to Jill Eikenberry who was then starring in L.A Law which would have been enjoying its last year. It’s so fitting that the woman in the game is compared to a TV actress rather than a proper movie star; Craig is talking about downtown after all, you would never have found, say, Michelle Pfeiffer on Fremont Street.

The most telling sentence in Craig’s look back is this:

“This club is an illustration of why poker is dying in Las Vegas.”

You’d think that Michael Craig could’ve foreseen ten years into the future; Chris Moneymaker, the internet, WPT and all that. Obvious really isn’t it?

More From The Good Old Days

Michael Craig is not the only one waxing nostalgic this week as we also find TJ Cloutier remembering the good old days fadin’ the white line between Houston and Shreveport and so on and so forth. Unusually for a poker player he actually reminisces about a hand he won as opposed to the usual bad beat story.

TJ relates a story about some good ol’ boy he knew back in the day who liked a drink and was fond of three-barreling whilst playing Pot Limit Omaha (they were real gamblers back then, not a bunch of short-stacking hit n run online nits which is all you seem to find these days).

“There's over $28,000 in this pot, and he never knew what hit him! This was the one time when Bobby was drinking and really had a hand, aces full. You see, a lot of times when he was drunk, he'd bet all the way through, and then on the end, he'd say, "Straight flush!" That meant he didn't even have a pair. Of course, Bobby's such a man, he never said a word, just "You've got a pretty good hand there, T.J."

Note to self: next time I lose a big pot with the second nuts tell my opponent they have, “a pretty good hand there”. That’s stylish.

Lee Jones vs Daniel Negreanu

Meanwhile a gauntlet has been thrown down. A while back I mentioned a blog by Daniel Negreanu where he expressed his opinion that the exposing a card in a tournament rule is silly (you’re not allowed to show your opponent one or both of your hole cards; if you do so you will receive a penalty).

Lee Jones at biggerdeal.com disagrees with Daniel and thinks it’s a good rule. In fact he thinks it’s such a good rule that he strongly feels other respected players in the poker community will agree with him more than they would agree with Negreanu. So much so he is willing to bet $10,000 on it.

“We each submit our argument to a public forum (here at Bigger Deal, Daniel’s blog, whatever). The three judges review the two arguments and each announces his verdict. Best two of three judges wins. Oh, and the loser has to stop claiming that he’s right, along with paying the winner $10,000.”

I wonder if anyone is willing to lay odds that Negreanu will still claim he’s right if he loses this bet.

Tournament poker R.I.P

We all know how the Unlawful Gaming Act in America has affected online poker, but at least the game is still alive and well in the bricks and mortar cardrooms right? Well, maybe not. Mike Paulle writes an interesting blog ruminating on the fate of tournament poker in the light of the I.R.S’ new directive that 25% of any tournament wins over $5,000 shall be withheld by the cardroom for Uncle Sam.

“Will anyone play in a poker tournament when they only get three quarters of their winnings? We’ll see.
Unless or until this new law is amended we may never see the huge turnouts again at the WSOP or elsewhere in America. It’s a sickening new infringement on our inalienable right to stiff the crooks who run Washington.”

This could well be the end of the WSOP and the WPT as we know it. Oh well, at least the cash games will be good again.

Antonius Gets Into The Swing Of Things

Patrik Antonius is another poker player who has been bitten by the golf bug. I guess once you can beat poker for hundreds of thousands of dollars it gets boring so you need something even more addictive.

“I ran into Daniel Negreanu at TPC in Summerlin a few days ago and he was surprised to see me. I am sure he cannot wait to get me on the course and take my money”

I guess it won’t be long before we all hear about some huge golf hustle/bet that Antonius and Ivey are involved in.
The good thing about Antonius’ blog is that I finally know how to play two-pair.

“I had an interesting hand against my last opponent. I raised on the button with A7 and he called. The flop came A 7 3 and we were soon in a raising war.

Before I put my last chips in the pot, I told my friend watching that he most likely has 33. But if he thinks I am folding top two he is crazy. I called and the seven of diamonds peeled off on the turn”

Another note to self: these top players don’t win millions of dollars by making “big” laydowns – less folding and more raising!

Hugo 'Chimney Sweep' Martin

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