Poker Round-Up, Day 3

I decided to go introduce myself to Linda Johnson.  I had heard that she is very friendly and approachable as pros go, so I decided to find out.  And she was!  We actually chatted for several minutes.  If you don’t recognize her, she is one of the personalities connected with the World Poker Tour.  I asked her to tell me a funny story or two about the WPT, and she had some cued up and ready to tell (she must get asked that question a lot).

It seems that there was a WPT final table at Foxwoods that had Phil Hellmuth, Jr. as one of the participants.  Now, whenever Phil is on camera, the viewing audience is in for a treat.  Although he is one of the best tournament players around, he tends to become explosively emotional very easily.  Sometimes other players will exploit that weakness.  One of the best ways to light the fuse is to check-raise or re-raise him.  He never expects that and it drives him crazy.

At this particular WPT final table, Phil was playing against Hoyt Corkins.  A big pot was developing between the two of them, and so the cameras were really closing in on Phil, waiting to see what was going to happen.  When Hoyt suddenly re-raised Phil all-in, Phil leapt out of his seat, all six-foot-four of him going airborne like Michael Jordan going in for a layup with the Chicago Bulls.  Unfortunately, one of the television cameras was suspended on a dolly directly over Phil’s head, so when he popped up out of his chair, he bonked his head against the camera like a car hitting a brick wall.  He flopped back into his chair just as suddenly and nearly passed out from the pain.  But since he realized that he was on camera, he tried to be very cool and nonchalant about it all.  However, nobody was fooled, and while Phil was trying to keep his composure (not to mention his consciousness), the entire room roared with laughter.

I also asked Linda some questions about a theory I have concerning how to play pre-flop in a tournament once the antes start up.  I had some ideas about this that I hadn’t ever heard anybody else talk (or write) about, so I wanted to run them past her to see what her opinion was.  She thought I had come up with a decent strategy about pre-flop play with antes, so that made me feel pretty good.

Back to poker:  Trying to piggyback on the previous day’s success, I bought into the $300 tournament along with 398 others.  As the tournament began, they started a fundraiser for a charity fund that assists casino employees who need small-scale financial assistance (trip money to Portland for medical treatment; flowers for the death of a family member, that sort of thing).  I gave them $10, got a cheap plastic lei as a reward, and hoped that the added karma would get me deeper into the cash.

Unfortunately, karma notwithstanding, I only lasted until around 7pm, where I went out in 70^th place, out of the money.  Back to the cash games I went, where I played another two hours without winning even a single pot!  That may be a new record for me.  At least I didn’t lose much money at it.

There was one very interesting hand that came up at my table during the tournament.  I wasn’t in it, but it was pretty incredible to watch unfold.  It was around the fifth or sixth round; antes had just started to kick in so there was a lot of dead money pre-flop.

I was in the small blind for this hand.  The player under the gun was the short-stack, and he raised a decent amount.  It was folded around to the cutoff, who raised all-in.  (This player had the first one covered. ) The next player – the one on the button – then re-raised all-in!  He had them both covered.  I folded, as did the big blind, and it was back to the original raiser.

This guy hemmed and hawed and thought for about five minutes.  He obviously had a big decision to make.  The longer he thought, the more agitated he became.  He started to talk, ask questions, get a bit louder, become more agitated, then basically he admitted that he had pocket Kings!  What would you do in a situation like this??  I mean, you have to believe that at least one of your raisers has pocket Aces, right?  Well, that’s the conclusion he reached, so ultimately he folded his Kings, face-up.

So there were two players in the pot, all-in preflop.  The cut-off had Ace-King.  The button had pocket Queens!   The flop came Four-King-Nine, the turn was another Nine, and the river another Four.  The guy with Ace/King won the pot and more than doubled-up; the button was the new short-stack, and the guy who folded his Kings face-up (and would have ended up with not one but two full houses) went into orbit he was so upset.  Obviously, he didn’t last much longer, but the button didn’t either.  We were talking about that hand at the table until it broke and we all moved away.  I’m sure the kid who folded the Kings is going to lose sleep over that hand.  I know I certainly would!

The only other interesting thing about the tournament has to do with the bracelet I won at the DevCon Poker tournament.  I was wearing it of course.  One of the dealers asked me about it (I was sitting in seat nine, next to the dealer, so he could easily see it).  He thought I had won it in one of the preliminary Pendleton tournaments this year!  It looks very much like the bracelets they are giving away to the winner of this year’s Roundup tournaments (a bit smaller though).  I started laughing because I was a bit embarrassed, and when I explained what it was and how I got it other folks got to chuckling about it too.