It's a gorgeous day here in the high desert, 73 degrees, sunny, not a cloud in the sky. Convertible tops are down, though I'm sure the drivers' pleasure is muted by the fact that no car in the city is going over 10 mph, because every road is clogged with NASCAR visitors--a couple hundred thousand of them, we're told. It's a day when your left leg becomes hypertrophied from working the clutch, and you wonder why they bother making cars with five gears, when you just go from first to second to first to second.
But none of that matters, because we've got us a poker match!
You can get updates on the NBC "National Heads-Up Poker Championship" every few minutes here: http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/2008-nbc-heads-up-poker-championship/main-event/. Michael Craig is also doing live updates: http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/poker-blog/.
My guesses for the first-round first bracket were horrible. I only picked two out of eight. (Fortunately, I knew they were mostly coin tosses, so unlike everybody else, I didn't put any bets down. I just highlighted my picks on a printed schedule.) I got Andy Bloch over Shannon Elizabeth and Jamie Gold over Tom Kelly. But who would have guessed Orel Hershiser would knock out Ted Forrest? That's kind of like last year, when Don Cheadle beat Phil Ivey in the first round. I also thought that Antonio Esfandiari would make mincemeat of Vanessa Rousso; after watching her on TV several times, I think that she's just not very good.
There's a lot more disorganization about this event than one would think, given that it's now in its fourth year. I found no fewer than five different starting times listed various places for the first matches today, including two different ones on different signs at Caesars! I arrived at about 9:30, which is what a sign I saw yesterday had said, though I didn't really believe they'd get things underway that early. There was already a long line for spectator seats.
I thought it was pretty dumb to wait for what turned out to be another two hours for a seat. After all, the thing goes on well into the evening, and not many will stay through the whole thing. (People quickly discover that you can't really follow the action, and things only get interesting when there's an all-in.) I noticed in last year's broadcasts that there were lots of empty seats showing in the background, so I decided to--what else?--play some poker and see what developed.
It was another bad poker day for me. After I had taken enough abuse, I went to check out the status of the viewer seats. More complete chaos. There are two clusters of seats, one on each end of the room, totalling maybe 100 seats. The main entrance to the room leads directly to the left bank of seats. But there's another entrance that goes to the right-hand end.
I went to the main one, and there were a whole bunch of people milling around. It was impossible to tell whether they were all waiting to get in, or just watching from the doorway. I asked a security guard what the procedure was. She told me to go back to the front desk and sign in, and as seats opened, they would call off names. I found the list-keepers. But they said that they had ditched the list. All I could do was wait in a line way back at the entrance to the poker room (which is maybe 50 yards from the entrance to the tournament room, where the taping was going on). She said they had been told not to let any more people in until 2:00. This was at about 12:30. I asked how they were going to fill empty seats as people left before then. She said they weren't going to.
I didn't believe this for a second. I think every TV show director wants every seat filled, because empty seats suggest that the event is too boring for people to bother being there. So I wandered over to the secondary entrance to the room. Here there was no cluster of people, no security guards, no list-keepers. Just a few people standing in the threshold to the room watching, and a bunch of empty seats inside. So I just wandered in and sat down in the second row. People were freely coming and going. After being in there a while, I overheard the floor director trying to encourage bystanders to fill the seats, because she didn't want any of them empty--just as I had suspected.
I have no idea where the people at the main entrance to the poker room and the other entrance to the tournament room got their instructions, but they were screwing things up, and couldn't even keep their stories straight between them. What a stupid mess.
Anyway, I was in. I was far enough away from the action that I had to use the maximum zoom on my camera, and that meant amplification of even minor hand movements, so unfortunately most of the pictures still came out blurrier than I'd like. But you can at least see what's going on.
As I arrived, two matches were already done (Cunningham/Brown and Wasicka/Deeb), and one had the last hand just as I walked in (Gold/Kelly). Two matches were finished up shortly thereafter, almost back-to-back.
The first was the Forrest/Hershiser stunner.
My guesses for the first-round first bracket were horrible. I only picked two out of eight. (Fortunately, I knew they were mostly coin tosses, so unlike everybody else, I didn't put any bets down. I just highlighted my picks on a printed schedule.) I got Andy Bloch over Shannon Elizabeth and Jamie Gold over Tom Kelly. But who would have guessed Orel Hershiser would knock out Ted Forrest? That's kind of like last year, when Don Cheadle beat Phil Ivey in the first round. I also thought that Antonio Esfandiari would make mincemeat of Vanessa Rousso; after watching her on TV several times, I think that she's just not very good.
There's a lot more disorganization about this event than one would think, given that it's now in its fourth year. I found no fewer than five different starting times listed various places for the first matches today, including two different ones on different signs at Caesars! I arrived at about 9:30, which is what a sign I saw yesterday had said, though I didn't really believe they'd get things underway that early. There was already a long line for spectator seats.
I thought it was pretty dumb to wait for what turned out to be another two hours for a seat. After all, the thing goes on well into the evening, and not many will stay through the whole thing. (People quickly discover that you can't really follow the action, and things only get interesting when there's an all-in.) I noticed in last year's broadcasts that there were lots of empty seats showing in the background, so I decided to--what else?--play some poker and see what developed.
It was another bad poker day for me. After I had taken enough abuse, I went to check out the status of the viewer seats. More complete chaos. There are two clusters of seats, one on each end of the room, totalling maybe 100 seats. The main entrance to the room leads directly to the left bank of seats. But there's another entrance that goes to the right-hand end.
I went to the main one, and there were a whole bunch of people milling around. It was impossible to tell whether they were all waiting to get in, or just watching from the doorway. I asked a security guard what the procedure was. She told me to go back to the front desk and sign in, and as seats opened, they would call off names. I found the list-keepers. But they said that they had ditched the list. All I could do was wait in a line way back at the entrance to the poker room (which is maybe 50 yards from the entrance to the tournament room, where the taping was going on). She said they had been told not to let any more people in until 2:00. This was at about 12:30. I asked how they were going to fill empty seats as people left before then. She said they weren't going to.
I didn't believe this for a second. I think every TV show director wants every seat filled, because empty seats suggest that the event is too boring for people to bother being there. So I wandered over to the secondary entrance to the room. Here there was no cluster of people, no security guards, no list-keepers. Just a few people standing in the threshold to the room watching, and a bunch of empty seats inside. So I just wandered in and sat down in the second row. People were freely coming and going. After being in there a while, I overheard the floor director trying to encourage bystanders to fill the seats, because she didn't want any of them empty--just as I had suspected.
I have no idea where the people at the main entrance to the poker room and the other entrance to the tournament room got their instructions, but they were screwing things up, and couldn't even keep their stories straight between them. What a stupid mess.
Anyway, I was in. I was far enough away from the action that I had to use the maximum zoom on my camera, and that meant amplification of even minor hand movements, so unfortunately most of the pictures still came out blurrier than I'd like. But you can at least see what's going on.
As I arrived, two matches were already done (Cunningham/Brown and Wasicka/Deeb), and one had the last hand just as I walked in (Gold/Kelly). Two matches were finished up shortly thereafter, almost back-to-back.
The first was the Forrest/Hershiser stunner.
Orel was using a baseball as a card cap, which is distinctly odd. He had Forrest sign it. Ted said he had never signed a baseball before. Kind of a turnaround of roles, eh?
Next out was Todd Brunson:
I've read several times that Scott Fischman had to give up poker dealing and turn to playing because of his rheumatoid arthritis. When I've seen him on television, I haven't been able to tell that anything was wrong with the small joints of his hands, but in person it's painfully obvious (and I mean that literally), even from about 20 feet away.
Survivor Bellande was the next victim. T. J. Cloutier dropped in to visit. If you're a big name in the poker world, they let you just kind of wander around the tables in the middle of taping. Apparently "big name" doesn't include me, because when I tried it, six burly security guys tackled me and beat the snot out of me. Or at least that's what I imagined would happen if I walked out there.
Survivor Bellande was the next victim. T. J. Cloutier dropped in to visit. If you're a big name in the poker world, they let you just kind of wander around the tables in the middle of taping. Apparently "big name" doesn't include me, because when I tried it, six burly security guys tackled me and beat the snot out of me. Or at least that's what I imagined would happen if I walked out there.
Then it was Esfandiari's turn. In the first shot, he's consulting with his family between hands. (There's a ton of down time during this thing. Whenever there is an all-in at one table, everything has to stop on the other tables. When there is an all-in and a call, the players have to wait an agonizingly long time before the cameras are all in place, and the tournament director instructs them to show their cards.) In the second, he's showing us the fine sitting posture that results in poker rooms hiring massage therapists.
The last match to conclude was the feature table, Bloch vs. Elizabeth. (If you look closely, you can see Doyle Brunson in the background.) In the third photo, Esfandiari pops over from his table to watch Bloch's A-K double him up against Elizabeth's A-Q. Antonio predicted a Q would come and eliminate Bloch, but it was not to be.
They went back and forth many times. I saw him be all-in with the worst hand and survive at least three times against her (e.g., K-3 offsuit versus her suited A-Q), and finally won it with, as I recall, a 10-8 offsuit sucking out on her K-Q. After the match, Ms. Elizabeth was comforted by Clonie Gowen, who scolded Andy Bloch for winning (but said that she still loved him). The actress was having a hard time holding back tears. I was less than ten feet away, and could see them welling up, and her lip trembling, and she was trying to force smiles. But basically she was crying. I wanted to yell, like Tom Hanks, "Hey! There's no crying in poker!"
But I didn't.
However, Andy Bloch ended up standing right beside me, so I took the opportunity to lean over and whisper to him, "Now look at what you did, you brute--you made her cry." He just smiled, shrugged, and said, "Yeah, well...." It seemed he couldn't think of any way to complete the response. I don't blame him. Hard to say anything sympathetic--and mean it--in that situation. For every winner there's a loser in this game, and nothing he can say or do changes that fact, or the fact that he's happy that he was the winner. If that makes her the loser, and she cries as a result, shrug your shoulders and move on--there's nothing else to be done. Some days you're the winner. Some days you're the loser. You have to take both in stride, or you'll drive yourself crazy.
As they say, that's poker.
Here's a shot of Clonie Gowen. She has lost weight dramatically in the last couple of years, it appears to me, to the point of looking quite unhealthy. She may have the flattest, skinniest butt on Planet Earth:
Finally, here are some random shots of the amazing equipment the TV team was using. That double-ring aluminum scaffolding is hung from the ceiling by just a few chains that look wholly inadequate to support all that weight. It's either magic, or it's going to come crashing down, killing everybody underneath:
Addendum, about 10 minutes later:
I did much better predicting the outcomes of the second set of first-round matches: I got 7 out of 8 right, wrong only in thinking that Daniel Negreanu would take down Michael Mizrachi.
That makes me 9/16 overall so far. Obviously, that's HUGELY better than random chance would predict. Isn't it?
Addendum, late Friday night:
First round action is done. I hit 19/32 overall. Glad I didn't lay out any $$$ on it. Not that anyone cares, but my picks for the second round are now:
Hearts: Bloch, Fischman, Cunningham, Deeb
Diamonds: Townsend, Mizrachi, Benyamine, Lindgren
Clubs: Kaplan, Raymer, Matusow, Ferguson
Spades: Hansen, Laak, Ivey, Tran
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