WSOP
2003 Day 11
Catching an Early Train
There
are not many things that can get me up
at the crack of 2 p.m., but today was
the final table of the 1/2 Stud / 1/2
Holdem and my friend Diego "D-Train" Cordovez
was there, one of the shortest stacks,
so I thought I'd better get there, err,
quickly. Of course I needn't have worried,
a few minutes after I arrived he went
on an amazing rush, winning some big confrontations,
and was chip leader. Eventually he was
heads up with Chris Ferguson. You could
have heard a pin drop during this battle,
the large crowd of spectators were silent,
watching these two toss chips at each
other, it was great poker. But more than
that, if you had to pick the two people
who most exude class, intelligence and
skill in poker it's these two; both are
consummate gentlemen, both are fearless
poker champions, they even went to dinner
together when it was all over, it was
tough rooting for one over the other.
The
line of the day that had the crowd roaring
came from Vince Burgio who was doing some
of the final table announcing, he was
talking about how when Chris had three
bracelets he had made a headband out of
them, and when he had four he had made
a waistband, he didn't know what he would
do when he had five, although he knew
what Phil Hellmuth would do, he'd make
a headband.
That's
two years in a row poor Phil has been
the innocent victim, last year of course
was when Mel Weiner's (pronounced Why-ner)
name was pulled out of the hat for the
match-play tournament (the event sadly
missing this year), then Phil's name was
pulled as his opponent, our thanks go
out to Perry Friedman for pointing out
that this was the Weiner vs. Whiner match.
While
I was watching the end of the final table
my friend Kathy Liebert went off to meet
up with some friends at Gee Joon, the
great Chinese restaurant inside Binions,
she said I should come along when it was
over. So about 40 minutes later I sauntered
over to the table and there they were,
the four of them had almost finished eating,
and sitting on the table was plenty left
of five great dishes of food, including
those excellent Walnut Prawns. If I am
ever rich I know exactly what I'm going
to do with the money, I am going to hire
a 'restaurant away team' who will wait
for a table, order all the food, then
I'll just stroll in when it's ready. This
was actually quite a table, and what better
place to name drop than in my trip report
where you can't give me dirty looks. Tom
McEvoy, Chris Bigler, Kathy, and Annie
Duke, I'm glad we weren't playing poker.
I'd never really talked to Annie before,
and I've only rarely played poker with
her so I have no idea if there is any
truth to the stuff Daniel says about how
she is at the poker table, but I can tell
you that at the dinner table she is a
very nice, friendly and pleasant person
and not deserving of the abuse she has
had to endure this past year.
After
dinner I played a satellite, my last chance
to get into today's 2.5K Limit Holdem.
I won't go into the gory details but I
was out in a hurry. Actually, yes I will,
my two pair flop lost to JJ that rivered
a J, my 88 lost to 77 that rivered a straight,
my AK totally missed the flop and cost
me the rest of my chips bar one, which
I put in with T9s and ighn.
Then
it was time for my contribution to the
11 p.m. fund. Whoever said you should
never limp with Aces was absolutely right.
Well, sort of, it was the other guy who
limped with them, and nicely trapped me
when my Q in the big blind hit the Qxx
flop.
I got more information about the chip
overage at one of the final tables that
Andy Glazer had mentioned in one of his
reports. As he reported the chips were
correct when the table started, and he
was correct that it all went wrong during
the color up of the 1000s to 5000s. Someone
screwed up and the player whose stack
they were using to collect up all the
1000s was the lucky recipient of 3 extra
5Ks. The procedure was clear, but it wasn't
followed properly, there was no foul play.
"Isolated Incident" :) it happens, it
shouldn't happen, chip counts have been
perfect other than that, lets hope they
learnt a valuable lesson. Personally I
think it should become standard practice
that if they are going to use a player's
chips for the color ups they should first
count down his stack and write that amount
on a piece of paper, they should then
confirm that amount when they are done.
And on that subject I also think they
should never touch anyone's stack unless
that person is present.
Last
night I wandered through the poker room,
still plenty of action going in the side
games (there was a Chinese poker game
going, actually it may have been going
every night, $100 a point, full of all-stars
including Men the Master) and still plenty
of satellites constantly starting up.
Today
I played another 800 point PokerStars
satellite to try to get into the final
for a WSOP seat. For the second time in
two weeks I got all the money in with
KK. Against AA. DOH!
Binion's
has just added a new satellite, it's $55
with two winners getting a seat into the
$225 super satellite (I don't know how
much if any cash is included). But I'll
probably play a regular satellite tonight
and maybe play the 11 p.m. again, or it
could be a trip to the movies, I have
a craving for overpriced popcorn.
Paul Westley
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