A stop at the Rio Amazon room

I just got back from a quick visit to the World Series of Poker.

Earlier in the evening I was catching up on some blog reading, and found Shamus sort of lamenting his birthday. I checked on the status of the WSOP event he was reporting on for PokerNews, and figured that I could rush over there and wish him a happy birthday in person either as the event was ending for the day or during their dinner break. Besides, I have never seen the inside of the famous Amazon Room--and how can I consider myself a serious poker player while that's still true?

So I dashed over. Had some trouble finding the entrance, as where I parked was sort of a "you can't get there from here" situation. Passed by Erick Lindgren at the taxi stand on my way in. Knowing that when I left the house he was still playing at the final table of the 2-7 no-limit draw event, I thought that that couldn't be good. Sure enough, soon after arriving inside I saw the television table where they were playing, and he wasn't at it. It's down to Lisandro, Matusow, and Greenstein at this point. I was hoping Lindgren would take his second, but of the remaining field I've gotta go with the poor children of the world getting the money via Barry.

Anyway, the Amazon Rooom is every bit as big and chaotic as everybody else has said. It's utterly insane--and this evening was not a particuarly crazy time, as things go. I was on the phone with Shamus for nearly five minutes, him trying to figure out where I was in relation to him and me trying to spot the landmarks he was describing, before he found me.

The final hand of Day 2 of the Pot-Limit Omaha event had just gone down, and Shamus and his PokerNews partner for the day, MarcC, were both working hard on the post to describe it. It's a crazy, crazy hand, well worth reading about (if you're into that sort of thing). See here. I expect that that play will be the subject of much Monday-morning quarterbacking. There's a fine line between brilliant plays and donkey moves in poker, and it's not always easy to label a particular action one way or the other. But IMHO, Vanessa Selbst's decisions in that hand fell well on the donkey side of the line--which is surprising, because everything I had been reading about this event as it transpired seemed to show her as bold but solid.

I gained new respect for the conditions under which the PN bloggers are working. I had assumed that they were up in the elevated media center, with a commanding view of the room. Nope. They're stuck off in a dark, unglamorous, unelevated corner, with a good view of only two or three nearby tables, and they're usually having to write about events taking place in some distant portion of the room, in what might as well be Timbuktu, guided only by scribbled notes handed them from the on-the-spot reporters. No wonder some things get garbled in the process. It's amazing they get as much right as they do.

There are distractions, too. For example, as Shamus and MarcC were rather desperately trying to sort out some conflicting data on that dramatic last hand of the day that set the final table for tomorrow, a random, older man, looking and sounding pretty lonely, stopped at their table and started talking about how June 11 was the anniversary of (1) Timothy McVeigh's execution, and (2) his own mother's death. Uh, we're trying to work here, dude. Sorting out Omaha hands can be confusing under the best of circumstances. Doing so when there are discrepancies in the reporting would be taxing even to one who is extremely familiar and comfortable with the game. Doing so while trying to be polite to a babbling stranger, and while virtual railbirds on the internet are already posting complaints that the details of the hand are wrong as reported, well, lemme tell you, those guys earn their pay.

But it all got sorted out (apparently), and there was time for a little chatting before I took my leave. On the way out I passed a strikingly thinner Mike Matusow (I assume that by now everybody who would care has already heard about him winning $100,000 from Ted Forrest by dropping something like 60 pounds over the last year), Andy Bloch, and Haralabos Voulgaris. I'm not particularly star-struck, but it's still kind of an odd feeling to encounter in real life people I've seen mostly on televised poker shows. It is, however, getting to feel less peculiar the more times it happens (which, obviously, is a lot more since moving to Las Vegas).

Probably just a couple more years, and all of those guys--Barry, Erick, Erik, Daniel, the Phils, Ted, Jennifer, Allen, etc.--and I will be on each other's cell phone speed dials, making mutual plans for dinner, golf, etc.

NOT!

Happy birthday, Shamus! Try to spend the next one working not quite as hard, eh?