World
Series of Poker T+10,11
Yesterday
I went over to the Mirage for their 7pm
Monday $60 limit holdem with unlimited
$40 rebuys and an add-on. 7 tables and
a very well run tourney, I had QQ three
times, lost three times and was out about
30th. There are a lot of very weak players
in these tourneys, at my table one guy
got very excited whenever he had an ace
and would just raise and bet all the way,
another thought K5s was worth calling
a raise with, another must have read something
about the power of check-raise bluffs
because he did it frequently. None of
them would be reaching the final table,
but as a group they sure made it difficult
for the good hands to win. Of course in
a ring game this would be a dream table,
but in a tournament you can only take
so many bad beats before it's all over.
I'll be playing there quite a bit, I'd
much rather spend $100 there for a lot
of play and a chance at $3,000 than play
$300 satellites for the same money.
When
I got back I started making some changes
to the clock software. What happened is
that at Binion's they have the TVs very
high up, and they are projection TVs so
the image is getting washed out by the
ceiling lights, making the small text
portions on the screen almost impossible
to read. I'd never had this problem at
other casinos so I wasn't ready for it,
but it seemed worth fixing because I'm
sure I'll run into it again. So, there
I was coding away making changes to allow
for larger fonts when I noticed it was
getting very bright outside, it was 11
am, I'd been coding for 10 hours and wasn't
even sleepy, I was in the zone!
Needless
to say when I realized I should be sleepy
it didn't take long to nod off, I slept
through the afternoon. Around 6pm I went
downstairs and ate at the buffet (very
small selection each day but good quality
buffet food), then headed into the tourney
room, loaded up the clock changes, then
saw that the heads up match between Allen
Cunningham and Jim Lester was just starting
up; this is the round one match that never
got off the ground, they are three matches
behind everyone else. Just to make it
more interesting Allen was also playing
in the 3K limit holdem and was playing
this match during the dinner break. There
were only three of us watching at the
beginning as everyone else was at dinner,
and as I've complained about before, we
never know when the match is scheduled.
One thing I discovered is that the beer
matches are much more interesting, Daniel's
Corona vs. Men's Corona was a classic,
Mike Laing's Corona vs. Micky Appleman's
Michelob was another great match. Allen
and Jim were drinking water. Jim was the
more aggressive of the two occasionally
stabbing at pots when Allen checked, but
I'm already making it sound more exciting
than it was. 30 minutes later and with
30 seconds to go before the limit holdem
was going to re-start after dinner Allen
realized what some of us have known for
years, you can't be in two places at once.
The dealer sensed his dilemma and obliged
with 74 for Allen, T4 for Jim, and with
a flop of 742 it was looking good for
Allen, except (I think) he checked hoping
for a check raise and didn't get one,
instead he got a Ten on the turn and made
it to his limit holdem seat with seconds
to spare. Jim now goes on to play Phil
Hellmuth, and the winner of that plays
Steve Zolotow. The winner of that plays
Tom McEvoy in one semi final, the other
semi being Diego Cordovez vs. Eric Seidel
or Johnny Chan or Daniel Negreanu (Daniel
plays the winner of the Johnny vs. Eric
match). There are some great match ups
coming, I hope we get to find out when
the games will be played.
The
final table of the 3K limit holdem (155
entries, down from 192 last year when
Jim Lester won) is looking good: Mike
laing is chip leader (79.5), the others
I know are David Plastik (50), Barney
Boatman (48.5) and Ron Stanley (44.5).
The rest are Barry Greenstein (68), John
Hom (50.5), Doug Saab (37.5), Lamar Hampton
(36), David Enoch (32.5) and Benny Wan
(19). (nn) is their chip counts, not their
ages, IQs or breathalyzer readings.
Paul
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