Homer's Odyssey, Part IV

by NoflopsHomer
Submitted by: noflopshomer on Sat, 31/05/2008 - 4:53am

Whilst still adjusting my body-clock, we'd had an early start this morning as the team learnt to deal with all applications of the Pokerlistings admin stuff, this took a good three hours, but I'm sure we'll pick up most of it on the job. A couple of the others were looking slightly worse for wear, after we'd finished the sit 'n' go, they'd gone to play beer pong at O'Shea's on the strip and of course, hadn't left until around 5am.

A lot of the admin stuff we have had to learn has to be tweaked specifically for the WSOP. Harrah's traditionally have a history of implementing one new 'stupid bastard' law every year. Last year was the hideous one post an hour rule (in truth, they trumped themselves with the tent as well), which basically spelled the end of blonde's interactive coverage. This year, the stupid bastard law is the following:

  1. Photos posted on websites may be archived for 72 hours only from the specific event date. Following 72 hours, photos are deemed to no longer be for standard news usage and must be removed.

Yes, you heard it right, imagine all the effort that all sites now have to go through to make sure that their photos are purged over the three days. Publicity? We don't want no stinkin' publicity. On top of this, Benjo, who is probably France's best known tournament reporter, failed to get accreditation for the WSOP. This is stupidity at the highest level, but I don't think I have much faith in Seth Palansky, Harrah's communications director, simply because he comes from an NFL background, and doesn't seem to have any knowledge of poker at all.

Anyway, after all this a few of us went for lunch in one of the Rio's many crappy (when I say crappy, I mean they're just average and nothing special) restaurants. We bumped into Joe Sebok, who a few of the other guys know, Joe always looks like a Californian surfer dude to me. Him and few other poker players are off staying at a Condo about five minutes drive from the Rio and then hiring out their meeting room for Magic: The Gathering games (which many players made the progression to poker from, e.g David Williams, Noah Boeken, Dario Minieri).

I came back to my room for a bit, chilled out, read some of Vron Ware's 'Who Cares About Britishness?' which is all about identity of people in the UK, but focuses a lot on immigrants, first and second generation mainly. I've only read a couple of chapters, but one bit stuck out for me, I think it was from a woman originally from Bangladesh, who was chatting to the author about national identity. She said, “When they ask 'what do ethnic minorities think about being British?' I hate that, because by using the word 'minorities' they are already setting us up as being different, when we in fact are all the same [in being British].” That's probably horribly paraphrased by me but I really love it as an answer.

At 6pm, Owen, Jason, Marty and myself went over to the Sahara to play the $65 comp there. You get 6k chips and a twenty minute clock, but after the blinds go from 100/200 to 200/400, it then becomes really silly, there's no 400/800 level and then it goes 500/1000 then 1000/2000, speccrapular!

First hand I managed to lose 1k of my stack flopping two pair and the big blind turning a flush. I then proceeded to not play a hand really for a couple of hours. The table was super aggressive, but more importantly, and entertainingly, super-clueless-aggressive. I didn't mind not playing any hands, the play was so bad that I was getting my money's worth just from watching everyone else. Firstly, a guy who claimed he played 10/20 NL and knew when he had to fold kings preflop, called off ¾ of his stack with A-Q on a 9-4-2 rainbow board against a set of fours after being re-raised all-in. He loved to try and place people on exact hands, a board would come 8-high, someone else would bet into him and he'd say things like, “What you got there boy, Q-8 suited?”

This clearly rubbed off on other players too, in the 100/200 level, the woman in seat one who didn't know what she was doing (but didn't play too badly either), limped, the gentleman to my right limped too. It got passed to the old guy on the button who raised to 1,400, the blinds and the woman passed back round to the guy to my right who looked pained. “Why so much?” he said. “It just... just smells like pocket fives...” He folded sevens, the old guy showed ace-queen, obviously someone needs to use some Olbas Oil as their smelling senses aren't that strong.

Next hand was even weirder. The guy to my left limped for 200, passed to the old guy who moved all-in for about 4.4k, the blinds passed back to the limper, who just went, “Man this is so sick,” and within ten seconds he mucked his kings face up. “He obviously has aces, he wouldn't make a big shove without them.” The old man showed a single ace of clubs, which clearly made the guy to my left feel vindicated. “See? I knew it, I knew he had Aaes,” he looked back at the rest of his 8k stack or so. “It's too early, too early to gamble...”

At this point, I wanted to play in the Sahara for the rest of my life.

I ended busting about an hour later, but not before I'd pushed all-in blind for 3.5k during the 500/1000 level, the big blind had about 22k and said, “I want to call, I have a pretty hand but I just can't.” He folded 8s-7s face up. I flipped my cards, I had the 6s-5s.

Marty and Jason both busted out before me, but Owen managed to make the final and end up chopping six-handed for $700. He was the chip leader at this point with 120k, but at six big blinds, it wasn't really that bad. We've nicknamed him 'Nitty McGritty' due to the fact that's he is a total nit, but to be fair to him, he was the only guy who knew what he was doing and played really well. This was in spite of the fact that a woman had raised in mid-position and he had moved in for his last three big blinds from the big blind with jacks and hit against her aces. “How could you call?” she said.

I love poker.

Slightly more worryingly was the high numbers of guys whooping and hollering non-stop in this tournament alongside the now standard amounts of sunglasses and iPods. In a $65 comp. Ludicrous. I'd love to interview people like Matusow or Hellmuth and ask them if they feel any guilt about inspiring a whole generation of thirty-something wannabes into acting like idiots and making a mockery of the game that I love. I hope I get that chance.

Song of the Day. 'Flowers' by Talking Heads. I love Talking Heads. You should too.