A visit to the Amazon Room

Many readers will know already that my friend Cardgrrl was playing in the World Series of Poker today--specifically, Event #11, the $2000 No-Limit Hold'em.

I went over to the Rio (a place I usually try to avoid during the Series, because I detest crowds) to eat with her at the dinner break. While there, I saw the 1970 Corvette that Tom McEvoy won in the Champions' Invitational Tournament the other day:



I passed within a few feet of Jerry Yang, Joe Awada, Bertrand Grospellier, David Sklansky, Phil Hellmuth, Billy Gazes, Maria Mayrinck, Maureen Feduniak, Dan Heimiller, Marcel Luske, and probably a few others that I'm forgetting now. In that place you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a pro you've seen play on television. (I didn't actually try doing so, but I'm making an educated guess.) I took a few pictures, but they didn't turn out well enough to bother showing here.

My plan had been to sweat Cardgrrl through the evening after dinner until I had to get home to do my nightly write-up for PokerNews. I discovered, though, that she was stuck in a corner inaccessible to the general public. From the closest vantage point, I could barely identify her, let alone get any idea of what was happening on the table. Worse, she was at Table #2, and they broke tables in reverse order, which meant that there was zero chance her table would break and she'd be moved to a spot closer to a rail.

So I reluctantly scratched that idea and went home after dinner.

I had not counted on the random-move factor, which occurs when they need to balance the tables without breaking one. No sooner had I fired up the computer than I saw a Tweet announcing that she had been moved to Table 40. I checked my map of the layout of the Amazon Room, and found that it was right on a walking pathway, so I could stalk observe her from just a few feet away. I zoomed back to the Rio, and it was easy spectating, as anticipated:




That's her between the guys in the red and orange baseball caps, getting ready to muck her big-blind hole cards after a big bully stack had raised from early position.

And, hey--who's that sitting behind her at the next table over? Black hat, UltimateBet jersey--looks kind of familiar somehow, but I can't quite put a name to the face....



Cardgrrl was getting short-stacked by this point, and I suspected that she would make an all-in move sometime soon, but it happened even more quickly than I thought. I had been observing for less than one orbit when she shoved on her button when it was folded around to her, holding 6-7 of spades (I think--maybe it was 7-8). Unfortunately, another short stack in the small blind also pushed all-in with K-10 hearts, as I recall. Even more unfortunately, the new guy at the table (you can see that he hadn't been then when I took the photo above) pushed his larger stack all-in, too. And he had pocket aces. Boy, talk about a blind steal gone wrong!



But she maintained her good humor, as you can see here, just after the magnitude of her dilemma has been made clear. The dealer ran the board out. She did catch a 7 for a pair, and so would have beaten the small blind, but the aces held up.

By old habit, I was about to write, "She took it like a man." But that would be both demeaning and inaccurate. She took it a helluva lot better than most male players do. She obviously recognized that it's the kind of move one simply must make in a tournament situation. Sometimes it wins you the blinds, sometimes it gets you doubled or tripled up, and sometimes you go busto. But taking that chance is clearly better than the alternative of getting ground down by the blinds and antes until you have a completely worthless stack of chips. So she did a very reasonable thing, and it just didn't work out.

Prior to that, from everything I can tell, she had played very well. In an ugly hand early on, she lost most of her stack, but never panicked, and waited patiently until an opportunity came. Then, in a series of three hands, she made a really nice comeback to be about average in chips, and held steady thereafter. It was a sufficiently impressive recovery that it caught the attention of the PokerNews blogger covering the event, and she got two live-update posts about her progress. (OK, it's possible that I put a bug in a well-placed ear to facilitate that, but it was a story worth telling anyway.)

I think she did just grand for a first time to the WSOP, surviving until about 10:00 p.m. (roughly eight hours of play), and outlasting many big-name pros. I was glad to get to be there for a small part of it. I hope I do as well when it's my turn a week from now.