Hugo's Blogspotting: 29 May

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Unsurprisingly many of the blogs are static this week with no new updates; it’s the calm before the storm that is the WSOP. I guess a lot of players are on their way right now to Vegas. Expect the next entries on your favourite blogs to be all about air travel and airports.

Two blogs that I thought would be full of content are Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth’s. Surely they would both be announcing that they had decided to give up their ties with Ultimatebet? After all, when you are in the business of gambling, integrity and trust are the most important issues.

In case you have no idea what I am going on about I am actually referring to another superuser account scandal similar to the Absolute Poker one that happened a few months ago.

Funnily enough, UltimateBet is under the same ownership and this debacle has been brewing since around the time the news broke about Absolute Poker. For the full story there is an excellent thread on 2plus2 here. UltimateBet has said it will issue a full statement about this mess sometime today (Thursday 29 May).

Hellmuth doesn’t seem to have made many public statements about the whole thing at all. Instead Phil just name-drops actors and basketball players:

“… …I texted Barkley later to invite him out to dinner with me, Tony Parker, Eva Longoria, and a few of the San Antonio Spurs players at Eva's restaurant called "Beso" (Spanish for "Kiss"). The food there was amazing (try the steak tacos appetizer), and Eva was the perfect hostess.”

What was it Nero did while all about him Rome burned?

What about Annie Duke? Well, no mention of UB, but its business as usual with the banal details of Annie’s life.

“I am only doing Bikram yoga, per doctor's orders but I have the goal to do Bikram everyday until the WSOP starts. I have found a yoga studio in vegas but with the WSOP going on I don't know how consistent I will be able to be.”

Scintillating I’m sure you’ll agree.

Alternate Profits

As has already been mentioned some big poker festival in Nevada is about to start and I notice on the schedule that event #2 is a $1.5k NLHE tournament. How many runners do you think they will get? I can’t remember if they cap the fields there and if it’s possible for the tourneys to sell out. You would think not, seeing how big that bloody Amazon room is.

One place where tournaments do sell out though is the Borgata in Atlantic City. Matt Matros has an amusing tale on his blog in a recent entry entitled Lame.

Intending on playing a deep stack tournament at the Borgata Matros found himself in a long queue on the morning of the tournament. It turns out that the Borgata had underestimated the popularity of this tournament and now had to start issuing alternate tickets. America certainly is the land of opportunity and it didn’t take long for a new market to spring up.

“The tournament started, and a funny thing happened--a bidding war broke out for the alternate tickets. Alternates 1-11 were seated immediately because the director made one new table. We'd been told they were going to try to open a few more tables once the tournament got going (at least ten tables were being used for cash games), so it looked like my #70 had a real shot of getting in. Ticket #13 was immediately sold for $850. (The buy-in for this event was $2,150.) #31 went for $400. I was offered $200 for my #70, but declined. #78 went for $150. The buyers reeked of gambling addicts desperate to be playing poker for the next three days. I get pretty sick just thinking about paying juice. These guys were willing to pay almost half the buy-in on top of the juice, just to have the right to buy in to the tournament.”

Wow, I mean wow. These sickos were willing pay a load of money just for a ticket that did not necessarily guarantee them a seat in the tournament. Talk about desperate. I guess casinos could just start charging 50% juice and poker players would put up with it. I suppose this is the effect that the UIGEA is having. Most of these degenerates are unable to get their poker fix online so this tournament was their only chance…

I remember years ago at the Master Classics in Amsterdam it used to be you were guaranteed to be able to sell your seat in the main event for at least double the price about half an hour before the tournament started. I haven’t been to that particular tournament for a while so I have no idea if that sort of thing still goes on, but it was a nice little earner for sure if you were realistic about your chances in the tournament.

Much like ticket touts there’s probably a bunch of hustlers in the United States who have cornered the alternate ticket markets at the casinos with the smaller card rooms…

WSOP Looking Good?

Finally, the WSOP is about to start. Did you know that? Just thought I’d keep you up to speed and all that. Anyway, I believe Daniel Negreanu is on the Players Advisory Board thingy and he is super-excited about this year’s Series.

And I have to admit, it does sound like they have finally made some changes for the good. No horrible tent this year. Remember that? You either got heatstroke or you were stuck directly under one of the air conditioning vents resulting in severe frostbite and pneumonia.

This year the tent is a food area and, according to Negreanu,

“a much more stable construction with better circulation”

What else? There is an entire separate room just for satellites with its own cage for buying in and so on. There is also another room solely dedicated to tournament registration. In the words of DN,

“Probably the greatest change to the set up for this year's WSOP is the usage of space. Things are well spread out which should help in dealing with congestion issues in years past.”

There is also a sushi and noodle bar, colour coded tournament clocks, an elevated media area specially for the journalists.

For some reason I have a reputation in the office as having a rather jaded and cynical view of the poker scene (I have no idea where they all got that idea from), and I must admit that at this juncture I would normally insert some smart-ass comment. However, I love the WSOP and would like it to see it get back to its former glory so I shall just leave the last words to Mr. Negreanu.

“Guys, it's incredible. Seriously incredible…. … from what I can tell, this year's WSOP is shaping up to be the best WSOP ever.”

Hugo 'Chimney Sweep' Martin

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