Yes, I realize I haven’t written here in an unacceptably long time. Started a few things that never got finished. Lots of half-processed photos. Change is coming, though, so bear with my creative genius. I’m overhauling my entire world, and there’s just no time for this nonsense at this present juncture.
All right, we’re back in three-handed action.
Before we get going though, the three men have disappeared for an unscheduled break as soon as Buchman was eliminated in 4th place. And when you’ve covered poker tournaments for a while, a little silent alarm goes off when the last few players just stand up and walk away from the table. I have nothing to support this theory aside from my tingling blogger senses, but I think Cada, Moon, and Saout talked numbers sometime near sunrise on Sunday morning. It was about a half-hour delay, and the three men returned from the side of the stage opposite the normal break area. I’m pretty sure Harrah’s doesn’t allow deal making though. And I don’t think JohnnyBax would have let Cada chop. But I also suspect the players can do what they want with their money. So I’m not sure. Just speculation.
Anyhow, the instantaneous fireworks that ensued doesn’t hurt my theory. On the first hand back from break, shit exploded. Here’s how I wrote it up in the live blog on PokerNews:
Hand #272 – Instant All In
We’ve got fireworks right away!
There is a dead button for this hand, the first hand back from break. To begin with, Joe Cada comes in raising to 2.55 million from the small blind. Saout then announces a three-bet to 7.3 million from the big, and action comes right back to Cada. After a minute or two, he announces, “All in,” and Saout instantly makes the call with his towering stack! With Cada now at risk for his tournament life, the cards are turned up:
Cada:
Saout:
With a long pause building the suspense, the crowd again comes to life as the two opposing halves of the room yell back and forth at each other. Alternating cries of “Deuce!” and “Queen!” bombard the stage as the dealer burns a card and runs the flop:
Ecstatic celebration comes from Camp Cada as their man finds his deuce, taking an improbable and commanding lead in the hand. The turn and river comeand
respectively, and Saout can not re-improve to tally the knockout.
Instead of being forced to watch the other two men bag up for the night, Cada is now the chip leader with 78,600,000, all courtesy of that two-out deuce, the most important card of Cada’s young career!
For the second time at the marathon final table, Cada had spiked his two-out set to earn a life-saving double. This latest installment of the miracle baby card gave Cada the chip lead and sent Saout and his fans reeling. Cada played a big pot against Moon on the following hand, three-betting his way to a bigger lead with more than 90 million chips. Three hands later, Cada and Saout would flip for that chip lead, Saout all in for more than 40 million. Here’s another one that I’ll quote, since I happen to like how I called the action.
Antoine Saout Eliminated in 3rd Place ($3,479,670)
Hand #276 -
Joe Cada has the button. He opens the pot to 2.5 million, and with it comes the final betting actions of the night. Antoine Saout makes an all-in re-raise behind him, enough to quickly fold Darvin Moon and his big blind. Cada, though, wastes little time making the call with his covering stack, and we’ve got a serious situation on our hands. Saout is now the one at risk of elimination, and he will soon find out that he’s flipping a coin for, oh, a couple million dollars:
Cada:
Saout:
“Ace in the window! Ace in the window!” plead Cada’s posse. Saout’s fans are murmuring in French, clearly a bit nervous for their countryman.
The spectators are punchy and tired and well-lubricated with alcohol, and the noise is awfully loud considering the relatively small crowd still left here in the wee hours. As the tension mounts, the dealer finally runs out the flop:
. That’s safe for the at-risk Saout, two cards from his double up.
The turn is safe too; thechanges nothing. The river, though, changes quite a bit indeed. Like a bolt of thunder, the
strikes the board and Cada is mobbed by a throng of yellow-shirted fans as he takes the pot with his pair of kings. Saout’s side of the room falls absolutely silent as their man can only shake his head and shake the hands of the two left standing before walking off the stage.
With Antoint Saout exiting in 3rd place, the final heads-up pairing is set for Monday. Saout officially earns $3,479,670 for his remarkable efforts here in the Main Event, but his bid for poker glory has fallen just two places short.
Joe Cada was swarmed by JohnnyBax and his yellow-shirted posse. Oh, his dad was there too, though you’d have thought Bax was his closest living relative. Darvin Moon was mobbed by toothless, unshaven hippies waving confederate flags, and they peeled out of the parking lot in their lifted Ford Bronco, hurling bottles of Budweiser at Cada’s Honda Civic. Antoine Saout was seen lurking near the Civic with a crowbar, a taser, and a roll of duct tape.
Okay, Cada and Moon actually bagged up their chips around breakfast time with the sun already peeking its head above the Vegas skyline. Everything was civil; no fisticuffs broke out when they came together to shake hands and wish each other a clean fight. It was a marathon day of poker that left each of them standing as the only man in between the other man and $8.55 million.
I’m not sure I’ve ever been witness to a more incredible and ridiculous game of poker, either in person or on TV. I just saw a jaw-dropping, hands-on-face, mouth-open-and-screaming day of cards, and it came on poker’s grandest stage.
The November Nine took to the felt at precisely noon-or-so on Saturday to face off for all the Benjamins. Specifically, 8,547,042 million of them. And the shiny precious-metal bracelet. The poker fan in me could not have asked for a better vantage point to watch the ensuing madness unfold; Garry, F-train, and I were perched on the stage 20 feet behind Phil Ivey. Donnie, Matthew, and Elaine had the bird’s-eye view in the press box atop the theater, practically straight up from the stage.
Peter Eastgate and Doyle Brunson came to the stage together to give the starting orders, and Doyle’s brief speech included the sentence, “Someone’s gonna make poker history here today.” Cue the dramatic foreshadowing. Last year it was Eastgate setting records, and this year, they were all broken.
The atmosphere inside the Penn & Teller Theater was too unique for words; poker media, hall-of-fame players, and rabid fans packed into the stands elbow-to-elbow. Shirtless body painters. Thunder sticks. Ja Rule in the balcony. Multi-lingual shouting. Bright lights and television cameras. And the tension of playing for life-changing money. The cards went into the air eventually, and the table played it passively for a few orbits, passing the blinds and antes around as they felt each other out. Despite the pay jump being just over $36,000 between ninth and eighth places, nobody wanted to budge.
It took 44 hands for anything really notable to happen. James Akenhead was the baby stack, and he went with for his tournament life. Steve Begleiter called initially, but he never got to see the flop. Eric Buchman woke up with 
and raised Begs out, but Akenhead spiked a queen on the turn and faded a river spade to triple up. It was deja vu for Akenhead. On Day 8, he doubled up over 5 million when his king-queen luck-flopped Jamie Robbins’ two red aces.
Back to live action. Darvin Moon had a mini blowup the very next hand when Antoine Saout flopped two pair with jack-deuce. Moon three-bet shoved with ace-high and absolutely no chance of a fold, and Saout was up to 22 million just like that. A few hands later, Akenhead ran pocket kings into Kevin Schaffel’s pocket aces and gave back all of those triple-up chips. Schaffel would finish him off in Hand #59 with pocket nines against Akenhead’s threes, and the Brit became the first casualty of the final table.
Just like Akenhead, Schaffel couldn’t hold onto his chips for long, and it was aces versus kings for him as well. Except Schaffel was the one with aces! Steve Buchman called with the suit-dominated kings, but he would find his trips right in the door. Just to rub it in, the case king drilled the turn to leave aces drawing dead to the Four Horsemen. With no river needed, Schaffel was out in 8th place on Hand #68. Buchman overtook Moon for the chip lead shortly thereafter, and the action was really settling into a groove. The remaining seven went to dinner after 112 hands, stacking up like this:
Darvin Moon: 41,250,000
Phil Ivey: 14,900,000
Steve Begleiter: 38,100,000
Eric Buchman: 54,725,000
Joe Cada: 10,700,000
Antoine Saout: 28,725,000
Jeff Shulman: 7,175,000
Ivey had been picking his spots, chipping up bit-by-little-bit. He lost a flip to Cada in Hand #131 though, and he would slide backwards for a while. Everyone seemed nervous for him. Seven-handed play lumbered on for hours and hours; I don’t even know how long really. More than 100 hands. Then Ivey found his spot. Worked back down under 7 million, Ivey got it in good with 
against Moon’s 
. A disastrous 
in the door took the air out of the building, though Ivey barely flinched. He had been munching on an apple before the hand, and he continued to pick away at it while his 7th-place fate was sealed by the turn and river. Donnie was ready to pack up and go home. We were all bummed.
I happened to catch Ivey’s bustout from my seat on media row. Made me wonder when D-SLRs will get auto-focus for video. But it’s watchable:
Things would roll pretty quickly from there on out. The play got looser and looser as the payout jumps got more and more significant. It was getting late. And I heard that Moon was up at sunrise playing the Hold’em table game down in the casino with Schaffel for $10 bets. He was still playing poker 24 hours later, though the stakes had gone up considerably.
Begs was next to go out despite also getting it in with the best hand. His pocket queens were no match for the run-good of Darvin Moon and his mighty ace-queen. The board was clean until the river, but the curse of Barry Greenstein struck Begleiter. The ace of diamonds on the river was not a good card at all, and a stricken Begs slinked his way to the rail and into the arms of his family. They were right in front of our table, and they were amazingly supportive of their guy. But media row was glad to have heard “Begs! Begs! Begs!” for the last time.
The pace picked up. Cada and Buchman had been pushing the action, but Cada was stuck around 10 million in chips. He got them in with pocket threes on Hand #195, and Shulman made the call with two jacks in the hole. As F-Train said in the blog: “Wow. Run good one time, Joe Cada. It’s a trey in the window.” Yes indeed, it was the three of diamonds, and Cada notched the unlikely two-out double up. It would not be his last.
Shulman would double up his short stack one and linger around for a while before bowing out next in 5th place. By now the theater was nearly empty. And mostly quiet. When there was significant action, a big three-bet or a sick turn card, they would rouse themselves to life a bit. But not much. Cada’s late-teen friends were still going the strongest, but even they had begun to fade. Fortunately things would continue to speed up.
At 4:20am, the big blind was a cool 1 million chips, and the four players left were drawing even in chips:
Eric Buchman – 56,100,000
Darvin Moon – 53,775,000
Joseph Cada – 46,325,000
Antoine Saout – 39,600,000
Buchman lost the biggest pot of the tournament when he shoved on Antoine Saout with ace-queen. Saout tanked and called all in for his own survival with ace-king. He would find two more kings on board to take the pot and the chip lead with nearly 90 million! In a weird two-hand sequence, Buchman would double up with 
against , then go broke with against 
. And both were against Darvin Moon. Kings on the board both times first saved, then eliminated Buchman in 4th. Cada was now the short stack with half the chips of the other two.
This is getting wicked long, so I’ll pick up with three-handed action in Part 2.
Yep, another 5 days with no posts. I’m not doing so well at this daily writing thing. I don’t know how people find time to write every day and give it their best. Impressive. But I digress.
I made it to Vegas this week, and it feels like home. The poker media and disciples of the felt are trickling into town from all corners of the country and the world. Went to the Gold Coast bowling bar Thursday and got caught up with everyone. Pauly and Change took Benjo to a music festival in Cali. AlCantHang still can’t accurately tell me where he lives. F-Train is off to Cebu to work the APPT event in the Philippines. Three of us went to PT’s to chow after, and Garry ran $60 into about $350 on the triple-play video poker machine while he waited for his entree. MBN.
I spent Saturday and much of Sunday covering the final table of the World Series of Poker, the so-called November Nine. What started in July with 6,494 players came down to just nine finalists, and they returned to the Rio this week to wage war for the most prestigious title in poker.
And they came from all walks of life. Steve Begleiter, the former manager at Bear Stearns, now in recovery mode on Wall Street. He answers to “Begs” and has annoying fans who chant his name three times. Kevin Schaffel, entrepreneur of his own printing business, now semi-retired. The senior citizen of the table at 51, his family and friends wear shirts that say “Schaffel Up and Deal”. Antoine Saout, the Frenchman, an engineering student who’s been having some good success on the felt this year. He always looks strung out with big red circles around his eyes. He and his fans only speak French, so the only cheer I can make out is “Allez, Antoine!”. Next is Joe Cada, the baby-faced student-turned-online-grinder. He’s a self-admitted “B” student who bought his first house with cash at age 19. My initial pick to win, and if he does, he’ll surpass Peter Eastgate for youngest ever to do so. We have a James Akenhead, the European standout who only comes to the U.S. to play the WSOP. He starts with the shortest stack, but he’s probably the second-best player at the table. Steve Buchman, consistent brick-and-mortar performer since his early days in the card rooms and underground clubs of the northeast. He could be your next-door neighbor, if your next-door neighbor happens to be the second biggest stack at the final table. Darvin Moon, the quiet logger from Maryland. If he’s your next-door neighbor, you should consider moving. Doesn’t own a computer, a cell phone, or a credit card. Appeared on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries when his girlfriend went missing. Her body still hasn’t been found. Seriously. With his big gray Jew ‘fro and straggly beard, Jeff Shulman is at his second Main Event final table. He’s the Editor of Card Player magazine, and his daddy Barry is the CEO. Jeff’s a bit of a curmudgeon, and he’s made waves by bickering with Harrah’s and saying he’ll throw the bracelet in the trash if he wins.
And then there is Mr. Phil Ivey, regarded by anyone with a valid opinion as the greatest card player on the planet. More than $12 million in tournament winnings to go with tens more millions in the nosebleed cash games. Seven gold bracelets including two already at this WSOP. Best poker face ever with his slackened jaw and darting eyes. Unreadable; makes amateur players cower behind their chips.
It was shaping up to be a captivating final table, and it didn’t disappoint. I’ll post a recap and some photos a bit later today. Or not. But I probably will, because it was pretty damn exciting.
A couple quick things to muse about as the November Nine is right on the front of everyone’s mind. I was standing over the Golden Tee machine at Blinco’s last night with E:60 on the TV in the background. They put together a segment covering Phil Ivey over the course of a four-day, multi-continent gambling tour. Phil let the cameras into his life and onto his plane as they hopped around from one casino to the next; check it out:
In other N9 News, the firestorm has finally flared up around Darvin Moon and the flush-over-flush hand from last night’s ESPN broadcast. Life’s a Bluff’s Matt Waldron sat down with Moon during the Final Table hiatus, and that hand was a topic of some debate during their interview, an excerpt of which was recently posted on PokerNews here.
The most interesting thing about the piece is Moon’s failure to remember the details of the board during that massive hand. To get started, read the hand the way F-Train wrote up the hand here:
Billy Kopp Eliminated in 12th Place ($896,730)
Wow. That’s a succinct description of what just happened on the secondary feature table. Billy Kopp opened for 600,000 preflop from early position and was called by the small blind, Darvin Moon. So far, so good.
On a flop of {Kd} {9d} {2d}, Moon had first action and checked. He then called when Kopp bet 750,000. Again, nothing out of the ordinary yet.
It was on the turn {2h} where everything went haywire. Moon checked again and drew a bet of 2.0 million from Kopp. Moon then check-raised to 6.0 million. Improbably, Kopp moved all in for about 20.0 million total. Even more improbably, Moon called!
Kopp: {5d} {3d}
Moon: {Qd} {Jd}
Kopp looked like he wanted to cry when he saw Moon’s hand. He knew that he was drawing dead and that Moon had him covered. Kopp had more than 80 big blinds to start the hand; with the {7c} river he had none. He didn’t even wait for the river to come out, barreling out of the secondary feature table area as fast as he could.
Moon is once again the chip leader with a whopping 45.0 million chips.
In what may end up being the largest pot of the 2009 Main Event, Moon failed to recall some pretty simple details. He insisted that the board did not pair on the turn while recalling Kopp’s hand incorrectly as well. I would have been shocked if F-Train or the field reporter missed the cards, and indeed, ESPN’s broadcast last night affirmed Mr. Train’s recollection of the events. It’s pertinent, because it looks like Waldron was just about to jump all over Moon for that play, for calling it off with the second-nut flush on a paired board. He starts to take an attacking course, but when Moon insists on his own version of the story, Waldron backs off and lets Moon make it up as he goes.
The way Moon revisits the hand details certainly raises a few questions about his play. I’m not here to jump all over Mister Chip Leader, but I wonder if he even realized the board was paired when he made the call in real time. He certainly remembered it wrong, but maybe that’s because he didn’t see it right to begin with.
This highlights a perennial problem amongst poker players, and I often get caught in the crossfire as a member of the poker media. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve been approached by a player regarding a hand I or another blogger has written up. The conversation usually goes something like this:
Player: “Hey, you guys totally blew that hand I busted on.”
Media: “Okay, what happened? You ran top set into a big draw, right? He hit his open-ender?”
Player: “No, that’s the thing. It wasn’t open-ended, he could only win with a 6.”
Media: “I have that he was open-ended with hearts too. Seven-eight of hearts gave him the open-ender and the flush draw.”
Player: “No, no. He definitely had a heart and a diamond. I can’t remember which was which. And the turn gave him a gutshot, 9 2 A 5, then he hits the six on the river.”
Media: “Are you sure? I wrote down 9 T A 5 after the turn. He wasn’t open-ended?”
Player: “No way. He friggin’ called it off with a gutshot.” <storms away>
In this butting of heads, it’s usually the players’ word against ours, and people already expect us to be wrong. Players misremember hands all the time, even those who pride themselves on impeccable hand recall. Often times, especially with elimination hands, he tends to remember the hand the way he wants to, the way that makes him look like the mythical hero or the unfortunate victim of fate’s folly. We as media take the heat on blogs and forums for missing the action as the benefit of the doubt always goes to the player. After all, he was sitting there at the table, right?
I’m not saying we don’t make mistakes, and I’d like to point out that most of us are eagerly receptive to players who approach us about a potential typo. That being said, I hope the players remember that this is our job. While the player is seeing the action from behind their own chip stack, our reporters and bloggers are standing keenly over the table, waiting for the next bet. We have nothing to do except watch poker hands go by, and I’d like to think we record them accurately in nearly all cases.
In any event, it made my chest puff out a little bit when I saw Waldron’s compliment, even though it had nothing to do with me directly. Good on ya, F-Train. And thanks, ESPN.
It’s been a good week.
It started with my trip home from Poland, last monday, an impeccable voyage from start to finish. I was with SAS for the first two legs like I mentioned in the first post about it. The long haul was Copenhagen to Dulles, a little over nine hours flying time if memory serves. I was scheduled for a cruel six-hour layover but I had already been eying up other possibilities. SAS/United had a 5:45pm scheduled to RDU which gave me about 70 minutes from the time I walked off the plane at 4:35pm.
I made it through passport control pretty steadily for a Monday afternoon, though the minutes were agonizingly ticking away on the clock. Luggage took forever. Snagged them from the conveyor belt which seemed to be humming along unusually slowly today. Straight past the German Shepherd and the pair of Customs officials in the middle of a chattering conversation. Dropped the two bags on the re-check conveyor and hoofed it.
I tried to walk as fast as I could without looking like a moron, all. the. way. down Terminal F or E or something. My mythical early flight home was parked on the exact opposite end of Terminal D or E or something else. The next one over. Just across the horizon. They were connected end-to-end and it was a friggin’ haul.
It was at least a 30-minute walk at the half-running pace I was setting. I got to the gate out of breath at 5:35pm and walked up to the middle-aged lady scanning the last few tickets. Laney was her name, I remember now. She rocked. As she fed tickets into the little ticket taker, Laney smiled genuinely and told me that there were empty seats and she could probably get me on there. Sure enough, after the final few people had cleared the line, she printed me a shiny boarding pass, shuffled me through the door and closed it behind me.
On board, in my seat, and in the sky before the sweat had even dried from my brow. Six hours magically becomes ten minutes.
I was home in a snap, and at Blinco’s for Golden Tee and Monday Night Football very shortly thereafter. Ah, back it up though for one second, back to the airport. I had deplaned and walked straight into the United baggage office near the conveyors. I showed my two bag tags and asked her if she could make sure my bags got on my original Dulles->RDU flight since I had caught the early connection. I would just come back and pick them up when the flight from the future landed. She punched away at her antiquated computer and told me that my bags showed up as “arrived” on her screen. Well, sweet lord. I had to wait another long while at the conveyor, but sure enough, my two pieces of luggage came rounding the corner, one behind the other like a little train of joy. Still don’t know how my bags made that connection with the way things worked out. No clue. Awesome though, a big thanks to United Airlines’ baggage service.
Anyways, loitering around the house in a vegetative state for the next few days, I finally had a chance to exhale and relax and untangle from a long three weeks of work. Lots of lining up ducks into rows. I finally got the entire EPT Warsaw gallery up, and Aruba is up there on the Photos page as well. Expect more to come soon as I continue to fill in this website. Check them out and let me know what you think.
Out went the weekend in a blaze of fantasy football glory. I didn’t even have to sweat the Monday game in any of my three leagues. Total domination. Looking really strong in the one I run with Chris. Tomorrow is another massively busy day of laundry and packing, which seems like all I ever do anymore. Not that I’m complaining. I’m off to Vegas on Thursday for some WSOP shenanigans. Can’t wait. Good luck and safe voyage to Donnie too; he’s in the early-going of a cross-country trip from Massachusetts to Sin City as he moves out there.
Jealous.
“You’ve got to make a mess to clean a mess,” she used to say. I’d hear this as I walked into a room to see mom poring over a floor littered with old photos or business paperwork or vinyl albums. Or in the kitchen with pots and pans, cookbooks, spices, and Tupperware containers scattered across every usable space. Mom gathered a lot of miscellany over the course of time, but she was the rare breed of pack rat who are exceptionally organized. She had to be. And she went with the binge-and-purge method of de-cluttering; pull everything out and put it all back again.
As I sit here in my bedroom/office/poker lounge of awesomeness with a floor full of crap, I become aware that I have inherited a lot of those traits. The good news is that I’m organized. The bad beat is that I just have too much shit. That’s really from a lack of space though. I’m only working with one room here, and it’s functioning as my bedroom, office, workshop, darkroom, theater, linen closet, and library. It makes it difficult to keep things tidy and findable, and that only drives me crazy once in a while.
Like now.
As such, I’m right in the middle of another massive organization, and I think it might be serious this time. Unfortunately, the middle is not the most impressive stage of a massive organization. Useless shit is strewn across my room like the remnants of a natural disaster. A bad one. Among the things currently in the middle of my already-cramped floor are a suitcase, a heap of ‘i’ll-do-it-tomorrow’ laundry, a tire iron, two baseball bats (from my playing days in the big leagues), half of the clean clothes I own, no less than six pairs of shoes, a snowboard, a neck pillow, three water bottles, two bottles of vodka from Poland, and a stack of empty picture frames. And a dog. And on my desk? Another water bottle, a beer bottle, two coffee cups, a bottle of mouthwash, a CPU fan still in its box, a stack of DVD-Rs, an ashtray, three lighters, a bowl, at least a dozen notebooks, a hand drum, and a huge stack of magazines and bills. You’ve got to make a mess, right mom?
It’s all part of a work in progress though, and I think it will be my finest opus yet. I’m well on the way to re-organizing my room, and it is a microcosm of my life as I really think about it. Every few months, I become aware that my world has filled with clutter, just like dust bunnies that creep up along the floorboard. Once I know it’s there, I feel this overwhelming urge to purge all of that stuff and reduce, reuse, and recycle. The latest installment of this O.C.D. resulted from a bad day with my desk. I was looking at all the shit around my computer, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. A clean work area contributes directly to productivity for me, and I realized that I couldn’t have an organized mind with such a disorganized environment. Once I started cleaning my desk, though, I had to clean the bookshelf next to it, and that created another mess somewhere else. I’ve been chasing this cleanliness all around my room for two days now, and it’s culminated in a full-fledged fall cleaning.
Really since the start of summer, I have been on a sprawling, meandering whirlwind of a course, and my life doesn’t have time to keep up with itself. Paperwork piles up in the drawer, bills go unpaid for too long, and I start to wear clothes from the pile of laundry that I just never got around to folding. General disorder begins to set in. I must fight it. Hence I have gone to war with my environment, and so far this bloodbath is a virtual draw. We’ve both landed our blows, my latest being a huge culling of magazines and electronics that I could never get rid of before. Gone. Take that, clutter! This sort of organizational overhaul has partially spawned this website, too, as I look for a place to quantify my thoughts and dealings.
You’ve got to make a mess to clean a mess.
So, a quick one for now.
I’m spending more time dicking around with the site than actually writing or producing content so far. I guess that’s probably going to continue for a while, too. At least until I get the layout to look a little more the way I want it. You’re just going to have to deal with it.
It’s taking a long time too, not that I expected to just click my heels and have a website. But despite being what I’d consider ‘technologically inclined’, I’ve never really built a website from scratch. I realized that I didn’t plan my ideas out well going into it, but I really didn’t know what I wanted and what was possible until I was hip-deep in code. And I say ‘from scratch’, but I’m certainly not monkeying around in there and pushing too many buttons. WordPress is the engine behind this mad machine, and I had to get re-acquainted with that. It took almost a week of reading and testing and fiddling to get a proper starting platform.
I had a bastard of a time trying to figure out what I was doing about a photo gallery too. I kept trying all this crap, and it was all either too code-intensive or to limited in features or too ugly or what have you. I kept FTPing some new wizard plugin to my server, loading it, configuring it, trying it, and deleting it right away. Many times. Yesterday I finally found what I was looking for.
SlideShowPro is an amazing little piece of software that has so far solved all of my needs when it comes to photo presentation. It integrates with Lightroom, too, so it’s handy for my workflow already. I bought the CMS and the Lightroom plugin pretty much sight unsen, and it has already been well worth the price. I had no problem getting it set up and configured, and the galleries it creates are stunning.
I’ve only just begun to get some content up there, but check out my Photos page to see how it’s going so far. I’m pretty pleased with the actual photo presentation, and it’s infinitely customizable too. Much more to come.
Today’s bloggery comes to you live through tired eyes in the 44th row of my Scandinavian Airlines A330. I’m finally flying in the right direction, east to west around half the globe and back towards home in North Carolina. It’s the 26th of the month (I think), and I’ve been home for a total of 18 hours since I left for Aruba on the 3rd. I miss my bed, the dogs, and American sports. Like crazy.
I laughed/puked when I just looked back at my itineraries this month. Raleigh –> Miami –> Aruba –> Miami — Raleigh –> London –> Madrid –> Marrakech –> Milan –> Warsaw –> Copenhagen, and now finally –> Washington Dulles –> Raleigh! At one point in there, I was on four continents in three days. And there were some brutally long layovers thrown in just for my amusement. At least I’m quickly becoming a golden citizen to a couple major airlines. Total miles flown in the last 23 days: 15,723. I’m thrilled that Washington D.C. and North Carolina have finally peeked into view on my personal seat-back moving map display. SAS has been a pleasant surprise on this trip, one of the few things that’s gone better than expected.
I’ll throw some photos up from the WPT Marrakech at some point, but that’s about all I’d care to do with that. It was not a great trip, but at least I knew that going in.
Okay, then… Warsaw. Apart from upstate New York, Warsaw has to be the grayest, blankest place on the planet. The particular hue of depression that Warsaw is bathed in makes the actual color gray look like a rainbow. Crayola doesn’t even know this color exists. I was there for eight days, and I saw nary a ray of sunshine the entire time. It didn’t help that I had just come from Morocco and then Aruba before that. From 95 and brilliant sunshine directly to 29 with freezing gray drizzle.
Ah, but it wasn’t all bad. The best thing about EPTs are getting to hang with Mad and Benjo and some of the other perennial personalities. EPT destinations are usually pretty solid too, and indeed, we found plenty of interesting places to shop, eat, and sightsee in Warsaw. Shaun Deeb was there, as was Carter Phillips, fresh off his EPT win in Barcelona a couple weeks ago. And Jim “Mr_BigQueso” Collopy, fresh of a big online score on Tilt. The three of them and the three of us (me, Donnie, and Jeremy) had dinner at the “London Steak House” one night early in the tournament. Queso had been drinking since he was eliminated in the first few hands earlier that day. Carter lives in Charlotte, as it turns out. And Deeb is always a good time to hang with. I lifted two beer glasses and the salt & pepper shakers off the table. Will pay for them next time back. Deeb lost CCR too.
The tournament was great until the second-to-last day when all of the big names somehow bombed out. When the money hit at 24, there were still 10 or 12 notables in contention, but thy got picked off one-by-one before the final table. All except Luca Pagano who looked like he might even pull it off at one point. A bad three-outer proved that PokerStars online tournaments are just as rigged as their online site, though, and Pagano went out in 4th. A wealthy French entrepreneur, Christophe Benzimra, ended up taking home the title, his first and the fifth for his home country.
Oh yes, I almost forgot to write about this. Let’s test out video embedding in WordPress blogs. So, Gloria caught a bad stomach bug for the first two days of the event, and I ended up doing a few interviews for PokerNews. I actually didn’t suck as bad as I expected to. I interviewed him, Katja Thater, and Antony Lellouche before notifying the team of my retirement upon Glo’s return. I think my career actually panned out rather nicely. Here’s Deebs:
And so it ends; I’m finally en route home. As we get bounced around by the jetstream over the St. Lawrence, the cloud cover just starts to break up. I can see blue sky, green grass, and the colors of fall in the trees on the horizon. Sights for sore eyes, the likes of which I haven’t seen in weeks. I’m going to really make an effort to enjoy the next two weeks, and really the rest of the year. For now, I intend to get caught up on a month’s worth of photos and paperwork while I have a chance to, and then wallow in a near-comatose state of inactivity for a couple days. Then it’s off to Vegas to cover the November Nine before heading to sunny Portugal for more EPT shenanigans.
Further updates as events warrant.
I stumbled into Reina Beatrix International early this afternoon in plenty of time to clear Customs and locate the lonely American Airlines 757 sitting in seclusion in the middle of the long row of empty jetways. My face was still hot and my skin still tight from the sun and the salt, and I had a dry ring of sand around each ankle. Straight from the beach to the airport.
The big clock on the departure screen told me I had an hour to kill inside the terminal, and the gate area was packed with American senior citizens looking reluctant to repatriate. I snagged a pack of cigs and found the bar, tucked in between the other two terminal eateries with a yellow-brown cloud lingering up against the ceiling.
A cute Colombian bartender greeted me with a seemigly-genuine smile, and I ordered a Balashi, the preferred local island beer. I wasn’t really craving a brew, but I was politely obeying the handwritten message on the chalkboard that asked in two languages for smokers at the bar to purchase a drink. As I sat there all alone, I finally had a few minutes to reflect on my last 10 days in the little latitudes. Things went so fast. It was only then that I realized that I hadn’t realized how much fun I’d been having.
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UltimateBet doesn’t do much in terms of live events, especially when compared to PokerStars (who are dominating the live scene on four continents already). Once a year, though, UB throws what’s rumored to be the premier poker party of the year. After about six years of trying and failing to get down to Aruba, I’m pleased be able to confirm that it is, indeed, the place to be come October.
They have a slogan for themselves down there in Aruba — “One Happy Island” — and the tag line is perfectly fitting from my experiences. Sometimes when I arrive in a new country, it takes a day or two to get acquainted with the sights and the sounds before I really understand what’s going on and how my routine will meld with the environment I’m in. There was no such feeling-out period in Aruba.
I had touched down on Saturday and taken the quick cab ride to the Radisson. I truly bleed black and gold when it comes to poker, and it did my heart proud to see the hotel and the staff liberally adorned with UB logos, patches, shirts, shorts, and flip-flops. Even the housekeeping maids were patched up. I grabbed a book of UB matches off the swag table in the lobby and when I opened it, I realized that it was actually a condom tucked inside a matchbook. I grabbed two more, thinking this was obviously fine foreshadowing of things to come.
After a warm greeting from the UB crew in the open-air lobby, I bumped into SusieQue and fstyfngrtps sipping on a tropical orange concoction in the bar. After the hugs and handshakes, I checked into 3622 in the third tower, the one farthest from the lobby and the casino. Big bed, nice bathroom, American channels on the TV, and a huge window shade on the far wall that hinted at a private balcony. I threw open the big slider to scope out the vista; single-masted sailboats dotted the shore of the perfectly aquamarine South Atlantic like a photo in a travel brochure.
“Oh shit, ‘Cuse! What up, bro?!”
It took an awkward half-second for my half-functioning brain to pull up the file for the person that was talking to me. On the balcony next door, two white boys and two dark island guys were peering around the corner at me. It clicked; the voice came from Matt “cwp394″ Ross, a fellow-Syracuse native and poker player. About my age too. The only thing that separated us was that he has yet to make it out of Liverpool and the great white north.
I first ran across Matt this past Spring at the Circuit Event in New Orleans. He was sporting a Johnny Flynn jersey, and we shot the shit about the Dome and the snow and Dinosaur BBQ. We never really hung out away from the tables there, though. The other whitey on his porch was Brandon “xblah” Riha. Brandon had come down from Auburn, and the two of them were my next-door neighbors in 3624.
Before I even had a chance to meet the two locals, Matt held up a trophy of a joint, raised his eyebrows and asked that magical question: “Do you blaze?”
Why, yes, Mr. Ross… Yes, I do.
After the introductions and re-introductions next door, I was burning down on perfectly-constructed roll-up of some mediocre island bud. This is literally within five minutes of my arrival. Many more sessions would follow over the course of the next ten days. Weed is a luxury that I don’t actively seek out when I travel, but it fell right into my lap this time. Matt had met the two locals, Juice and Jamilo, down in the casino. That kid can strike up a conversation with anybody. They were dealers in the gaming sense of the word, but they could also scrounge up a few grams of whatever you needed within 30 minutes at any time of the day or night.
It’s pretty easy to make friends on a poker trip, and the five of us would hang together for the bulk of the week, along with a rotating crew of onliners like “weeminer” and “bazeman”. Juice and Jamal showed us where the women were and taught us a few phrases in Papamiento to break the ice, and we taught them how to count cards at blackjack and how to three-bet shove on a flush draw. We shared lots of late-night sessions at the tables and far too many rounds of Aruba Arribas, the sweet orange drink of choice among the American visitors. Nectar of the gods. Jamal and Juice had joint-rolling contests. I’m talking serious museum quality rolling skills here. Perfection. We laughed and joked and swore and smoked all night every night.
Such was my week. Work. Swim. Drink. Smoke. Sleep. Rinse. Repeat. Fantastic.
The tournament itself was a lot of work, but it came and went quickly enough. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a vacation for vacation’s sake… in fact, even writing this, I can’t remember the last time I’ve been away for something other than work. With that thought well in mind, I decided to loiter around the island for a few days after the tournament crowd dispersed. It was better than heaven. I pissed the days away laying under a palm tree on the beach, a book in one hand, a beer in the other, and Buffett filling my ears and easing my soul.
There was only one thing missing.
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The voice over the loudspeaker in the terminal announced in broken island-English that our flight was boarding. I polished off the last swig of my Balashi, snubbed out my cigarette, tipped the bar chick, and carried my half-ton of luggage to the gate. ‘Ross the Boss’ had hooked me up with some special brownies a few days earlier, and I had somehow managed to save them until now as I was getting settled into my window seat. They were amazing. My last conscious thought was how pleasantly plentiful the legroom was on this particular flight. When you’re 6′4″ with sketchy knees, even an extra inch or two in front means the difference between relative comfort and requiring a full day to untangle your spine after you get home.
Our plane broke free from gravity’s grasp with that familiar ka-thunk of tires and asphalt parting company, and I dove headlong into sleep recovery mode before we even reached the cloud deck. The tranquil shore was still visible out my right-side window the last time my eyes dropped shut.
Adios, Aruba.
See you next year; you can bet your happy little island on that.
Changes in latitudes
Changes in attitudes
Nothin’ remains quite the same
Through all of the islands and all of the highlands
If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane
