HugePoker

There’s some good news coming. I’m headed for bed, and, to be honest, I’m kinda drunk after some excellent celebration with Team Huge in Dan and Maya’s palatial suite, but I promise I’ll write it up soon…

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Sorry Laurie, but your Dim Sum curse has been discredited.

Years ago, when I was a wee little poker player just starting to play poker tournaments online, I was thrilled to have won a satellite awarding a $320 entry (WOW!!) into one of the big online Sunday tournaments. This was going to be the biggest tournament I had ever played, and to get ready for this momentous occasion I invited friends and family to get together on the morning of the tournament to consume Dim Sum (sort of like Chinese breakfast tapas, for those of you unfortunate enough as to be uninitiated). My eldest sister Laurie joined the table, we ate lots of good Dim Sum, and then I went home to play the tournament. I have no memory of what happened poker-wise, but I didn’t cash in the event. Ever since then Laurie has decided that it was because of the Dim Sum, and some of you may have noticed the (perhaps mysterious) comments on some of my posts preceding a big tournament from someone calling herself “lgh” saying “NO DIM SUM!”. She even created a little logo with a picture of a piece of Hum Bao (steamed dumpling filled with BBQ pork) slashed by a universal-No sign.

Well, Laurie, I thought of you when I found out that the Gold Coast, where I have spent much of my Vegas stay, has a new Asian restaurant, called Ping Pang Pong, bragging of a daily Dim Sum breakfast. As I continued to lose tournament after tournament, I wondered whether you would claim that even staying in a hotel containing a restaurant serving Dim Sum had cursed me, without me even eating any. (I did eat dinner there twice, and liked the place quite a bit – it’s always filled with Asians, a good sign, and I hear very little English being spoken, which sometimes is a problem when trying to communicate with the wait-staff).

I’m very pleased to report that Team Huge has begun to descend on Vegas – Rachel (aka Mrs. Huge) arrived Wednesday, Pete arrived that morning as well, Dan and Maya got here yesterday morning, and Melissa should be pulling in from L.A. any minute now. Deb will fly in tomorrow night, and in a surprise move Jeremy will gain entrance into the team when he takes a pause in his cross-country road trip right around the start of the main event. Yay Team Huge! Some others of you have made rumblings about possibly coming to Vegas – I haven’t done a good job of keeping up the pressure, but here it is: Come to Vegas! It’s a lot of fun to be here during the WSOP, and there’s a lot to do here even if you don’t play poker. Let me know if you’re thinking of joining the team and I’ll give you lots of details.

So back to the Dim Sum. Team Huge likes Dim Sum. Team Huge would not be denied Dim Sum just because of some silly curse. The timing was perfect – Dan and Maya flew in on an early morning flight (and for a $20 tip got upgraded to a suite that’s bigger than their house – no joke), Pete was playing a Caesars tournament at Noon, I was playing at the Wynn at 2PM, and Dan and Maya were headed for Planet Hollywood’s 2PM tournament, so we threw caution to the wind and packed into Ping Pang Pong for some delicious Dim Sum.

Dan made it to the final five in the P.H. tournament and accepted a 5-way chop earning him $665, his best tournament cash ever, and I finished 2nd at the Wynn for $1979 (in spite of completely outplaying my opponent heads-up and having him get very lucky on me to snatch victory away). Mark nearly made it a hat trick with a deep run in the nightly mega-satellite, but he sadly busted in 13th when he needed 6th to win a $10,200 main event seat. I’m not sure Mark would want to be labeled as a member of Team Huge – I think he thinks the whole Team Huge concept is pretty amusing. I guess it is pretty amusing, but you have to ask yourself – if he had embraced the whole Team Huge concept and joined us for Dim Sum, would he be $10,200 richer right now? I don’t know the answer to that question – I guess we’ll never know.

I’ll write up some stories of the Wynn tournament if I find time – it was a good tournament and I think I played well. Ironically I think I played best when it got down to two players, but it’s hard to win when your opponent wins a massive coin flip (for all his chips) and then (again for all his chips) sucks out with A-3 all-in preflop against my pocket Jacks. Blechh.

I guess Laurie can cling to the idea that I would have won if I hadn’t eaten Dim Sum, but I’m going to go with the opposing argument that the best (and only decent) result I’ve had in three weeks came on the day of Dim Sum consumption. Bring on the chicken feet!!!

-huge

I’m not sure how many multi-table tournaments I’ve played in a row now without a single cash, but I’m pretty sure it’s on the wrong side of twenty. On Monday I reached a new low point by busting out of a tournament at Caesars 15 minutes after it started with the 2nd nut flush vs an opponent’s nut flush. Later that day I won a single-table tournament at the Rio, so those continue to be profitable, but the multi-table front has just been a catastrophe apart from the one bright spot at the Wynn, which seems like a couple of years ago.

But I keep plugging away, which usually means a noon tournament at either Caesars or the Venetian (or the Rio when I’m playing a WSOP event), and if I bust out of that early I head over to the Wynn’s 2PM tourney. Yesterday I diligently shuttled over to the Venetian, and within a half hour I was off to a great start. I flopped four sets in the first couple of hours, and although I lost some money on one of them, I got paid off big time on two, which more than compensated. Two hours into the tournament I had well over double the average stack. Things slowed down after that, and I had a few setbacks, but I maintained a good stack and was happy with my table - two predictable players to my left and all the other seats at the table kept busting out and getting replaced by fresh meat. But then they broke that table and things started to go wrong. Early position short stack pushes all-in, I look down at Kings and flat call, hoping someone will come over the top of me. Late position obliges and shoves, I call, my opponents turn over 88 and AK. Great! I just need to dodge Aces and Eights and I’ll win a $130,000 pot and be one of the chip leaders with 100 players left out of the initial 634. Flop is no problem, turn is no problem, river is a bit of a problem - an 8, giving the short-stack 70,000 chips that should have been mine, leaving me to collect the side pot, knocking out the AK, leaving me with about the same stack I started with before the hand. Oh well, at least it wasn’t an Ace on the river, which would have crippled me.

So that sucked pretty bad even though I didn’t lose a pile of chips. I proceed to get heavily involved with two hands that I end up having to get away from - one of them I probably played badly and the other one a player made a very dangerous (bordering on maniacal) bluff to get me out of the hand. After those two hands I was in trouble, and as we got down to 60 players, with 54 getting paid, I was in serious bubble trouble. There was no way I could fold into the money even if I wanted to, and with a $408 prize for a $340 investment after 11 hours of poker that wasn’t really my goal anyway. I caught some good cards but got no callers with them, and showed my KK, AK, AQ each time. Finally I had to shove with a weak hand - 8-7-offsuit - and of course that was the time someone decided to call me - with A-J. At least I wasn’t dominated, and I got just what you hope for with live connecting cards like that - picked up a straight draw on the turn and hit my Eight on the river to double my stack back to 60,000 - still shorter than average but not in so much bubble danger.

I got no playable hands through the bubble and blinded down to 28,000 by the time we made the money, at which point we redrew for seats and I had the severe misfortune to get a new seat on the big blind, just as the blinds went up to 4000-8000 with a 1000 ante. I almost have to call with any two cards in that spot, but when there’s an all-in raise and a larger all-in reraise I decide I’m better off waiting for the next hand instead of playing Ten-Deuce against two presumably strong hands. The next hand I pick up Q-T, against only one raise from the button, at which point it’s a no-brainer call. The button turns over J-7 (really?) and I’m actually ahead, but once again the river turns the tables with a Seven and I’m out in 52nd place, for the aforementioned $408 prize, ie $68 profit for 11 hours work. God it’s glamorous being a professional poker player.

-huge

After 2 hours of playing like the sissiest of sissies (or having cards like the crappiest of crap, depending on how you want to look at it), I blinded down to a pathetic 1900 chips, just barely enough to pay the blinds and still have some fold equity. Then comes the almost-worse-than-death disaster: On my big blind, an even shorter stack pushes into me. He doesn’t really have enough chips that I need to look at my cards, but with KQ in my hand I would have called a bigger bet anyway. Sadly he has AQ and I’m dominated. But then a King on the flop looks like it gives me a tiny bit of revenge for last year’s 800,000 chip catastrophe in the main event (when my AQ lost to an opponent’s KQ) but my revenge is short lived as an Ace hits on the Turn, and I’m knocked down to a sniveling, scum-sucking 1200 chips with the blinds at 150-300. You’d think that would mean all fold equity is out the window, but a few hands later I stick it in and the big blind shows his 4-2-offsuit as he folds. The blinds pass through me and I’m back to 1200. I never picked up a tolerable hand or even a situation where I could get my chips in first until I looked down at A-Q-diamonds, which looked like a goldmine until the tight player after me re-raised all-in for like a thousand times the size of my stack. OK, well maybe he’s isolating with JJ or something, though it doesn’t really seem like his style. Indeed not, he turns over AA, and I’m in the worst shape possible - he’s a 7:1 favorite to knock me out. The flop is not too bad though - two diamonds and a Queen - and the turn seals it with a third diamond, giving me an unbeatable nut flush. I double up to 3000 and I’m back to having only one foot in the grave.

I started writing this post at the table right after cracking the Aces, but sadly I am finishing it from my hotel room. Twenty minutes after the Aces, I picked up what I thought was a good re-stealing opportunity when an active player raised my big blind and I re-shoved with T-9-suited. He thought for a long time and I thought I’d pick up the pot, but in the end he called with A-Q, two Queens on the flop made him about a 95% favorite, and even Luckbox Larry has his limits.

2720 players, I’m out around 800th place after 6 hours. Zero for Four in the 2008 World Series. Barring a miracle I probably won’t play another event for a week - there’s another $1500 event next Saturday.

-huge

My multi-table tournament results continue to be depressing, and after two more bustouts yesterday followed by two failures in the single-table satellite room I was feeling pretty discouraged. In one of the tournaments I thought I was finally on a roll when, in the first hour of play, I took a cheap shot with 6-5o, flopped K-4-2 for a gutshot, called a small bet on the flop and turned the mortal nuts with an offsuit 3 and got all the chips in against the poor sod with 4-4. No pair on the river and I was sailing with 16,000 chips – a truly massive stack with the blinds at 25-50. But a couple of hours later I ran my KK into a set of Tens and I was crippled, busting soon thereafter.

So I was not a happy camper last night. And to top it all off I somehow missed a phone message from Mark inviting me to dinner, so I ended up sitting around my room at the Gold Coast and watching episodes of “Law and Order” and playing poker online. This would have been completely pathetic if not for the fact that I had a couple of good results online in single-table “Steps” satellites – first playing and winning a “Step 4” tournament yielding me a $700 “Step 5” ticket, and then playing and winning the Step 5 tournament, so that I am now the proud owner of a $2100 “Step 6” ticket. Step 6 is the final step – if I can win that one I’ll pick up another $12,000 WSOP prize package.

I then proceeded to play almost zero poker today – I sat by the pool, did some busy work, took a nap, had dinner by myself and didn’t even make it over to the Rio until 6:30. I played one single-table satellite and pretty much demolished it. When we got to heads-up the other guy asked if I had any interest in chopping it and I said that I’d rather just play it out – I was pretty sure I could outplay him soundly – and a few minutes later that was looking like an excellent choice on my part when we got all our chips on with my A-J against his A-4s, but the moron rivered a spade to give him a flush. Even so he only had a 3:2 chip lead, but at that point I was happy to make a deal and convinced him to take $880 to my $740.

So I’m taking all of that to be a small glimmer of a recovery, and it made me feel better about signing up for the $1500 WSOP event tomorrow morning. As usual, if you want to check on my progress:

You can check for personal updates HERE

You can also get updates on my event at cardplayer.com and pokernews.com.

Send the good-card-vibes toward Vegas in the early afternoon – that’s when you really need to catch a couple of good pots in these $1500 events.

I’ll keep you posted.
-huge

I’m busted out of yet another $1500 event at the world series, leaving me 0 for 3 this year.

I took a big hit on the 2nd hand of the tournament when I picked up AK in the big blind with a raise and a call into me. I reraise to 375, happy to just pick up the pot right there but willing to see a flop too – the original raiser calls and the third player folds. The flop of KT4 seems like something I should be pretty pleased with, so I put out 525, and the guy on my left says “All In”, and I just restrain the urge to vomit all over the table. I work my way back through the hand, and I remember a little grimace he made when the other player folded, when he wouldn’t have thought I was watching him. All of the sudden my top pair of kings is shriveling up in a big fat hurry, as the only hand that makes sense for him to have in that spot is Aces. I almost call anyway, but I show a little discipline and make the good fold, and he’s kind enough to show me the Aces (kind of a mistake on his part - I would have suffered more if he had just thrown the Aces in the muck and let me agonize).

After that I’m in bad shape, and I tread water for a while until I pick up a pair of sixes on the button with everyone folding to me. I raise – again happy to just steal the blinds if they’ll let me, but both say no to that idea and call. I’m not too sad about that when the flop brings a glorious six, and now it’s just a matter of getting paid for my monster. Both players check and I bet small, hoping at least one of them will read me as weak – they both call and I rinse and repeat on the turn, betting a little less than half my chips on the turn. This time the guy who burned me with the Aces earlier says “I can’t believe I’m laying this down” and folds, and I say a silent “Crap!” and shift my prayers to the other guy, a cocky young player who has already bragged about winning the Bellagio tournament twice in the past week. He fingers his chips as if he’s going to check-raise me, but ends up calling. The river brings a blank – he can only beat me if he has a higher set, and there’s no way he has that with the betting so far. He checks and I toss my remaining 700 chips in and he starts muttering about whether the river could have helped me and I desperately want to reassure him that it didn’t, but even without my reassurance he finds a way to call, and I turn over my set and he wilts. Then he starts talking about how he’s not bothered at all about busting out of this event because he can always go over to Bellagio and win another one there.

So I’m back around 3000, but I don’t stay there for long – after a couple of continuation bets run into brick walls, I get back down around 1500 and then am happy to be moved to a new table. The blinds increase to 100-200 and I’m in pretty desperate shape, and AQ is plenty good to make a stand with. When a player with slightly more chips than I have agonizes and then calls I can’t be too worried – if he had anything that beat me he would have snap-called – but when another player overcalls I’ve got to sweat a little, because he’s *got* to have a big hand, right? The first guy turns over 55 – OK we’ve got a coinflip, I don’t think much of his call but whatever, I’m mostly worried that the last guy might have me crushed. But umm no – he turns over KQ. Bad news is that he has one of my outs against the other guy, good news is that I have him crushed and if I win the coinflip against 55 I’m very likely to beat KQ (barring a board with both a King and a Queen but no Ace), and the very good news is that if I win, I triple up to over 5000 chips. Some of you will remember that last year I busted out of the main event with AQ vs KQ, and here I go again, with not much consolation in the fact that it wasn’t the KQ that beat me. No high cards on the flop, turn or river, and no miracle two-pair on the board to counterfeit the fives, and the fives hold and I’m zero-for-three in WSOP events, and – this is ugly – zero for fifteen in the multi-table tournaments I’ve played since the tournament I won at the Wynn. I’ve won some money in single-table satellites in that period, and in general I’ve been successful with those. I may switch to grinding the singles for a few days to try and get to a more comfortable financial spot before throwing any more large sums at the multis. There are more $1500 WSOP events on Thursday and Saturday, and in my current mood I’m thinking to skip the Thursday and hold out for Saturday. But we’ll see …

In brighter (but infuriating) news, my buddy Ace arrived yesterday morning, took a taxi straight from the airport to Caesars, where he played the same $235 tournament I played, made it to day 2 today, made it to the final table as one of the chip leaders, and then negotiated a deal when they got down to three players that totally screwed over the other two (equal I think to the deal I struck at the Wynn giving me 90% of first place money – dealmaking is a whole separate poker game in itself), leaving him with $16,000 in his pocket and allowing me to coerce him into buying me food and drinks at the Mesa Grill, one of my favorite restaurants in Vegas. Congratulations, Ace. Ya big jerk.

In about 9 hours (ie noon) I’ll be throwing my hat (and $1500) into another WSOP event. Same as usual … (yes I just cut and pasted this from a previous entry)…

You can check for updates on my progress HERE

You can also get updates on my event at cardplayer.com and pokernews.com, but I’m unlikely to get much press unless I go really deep or end up at a table with a celebrity.

I played 2 tournaments today and lost 6 coinflips, all with AK or AQ vs a pair, without ever winning one. In the 2nd tournament I had a good stack with 60 left out of the 250 that started the thing, and after the coinflip bloodbath I was eliminated in 50th, with top 27 getting paid, after which I walked directly to the Palms to see “The Incredible Hulk” with various poker celebrities. Hopefully that’s all done now (the coinflip-losing), as these $1500 events very often involve a flip at some point that you need to win to survive. HEADS!!

-hugencrantzerstern

Well, now I know what it’s like to bust out of a WSOP event relatively quickly. The $1500 events are so short stacked that if you don’t build a big stack early (as I have in the previous three) you’re just going to have to gamble at some point. So first I got my chips in on a good coin flip - 66 vs AK with lots of dead money in the pot. but the good coinflip turned into a crippling blow on the QJT flop. There’s a good story on that hand which I’ll write up when I’m not thumbing on my phone, but that knocks me down to 1500, and when the blinds go up to 100-200 I think I’m happy to get my chips in with AQ until I find out I’m up against AA.

Out after 3 hours, probably 2000th out of 2706, now 4 for 6 in WSOP events. sigh.

Mark made it to the money (45 players left) in excellent shape, and was flirting with the 100,000 chip milestone when disaster struck. He picked up Aces in the hold’em section, raised and got called by Minh Ly and Allen Cunningham, two guys you don’t want to run into at a poker table. The flop is K-T-4 and all the money went in between Mark and Minh on the flop, and of course Minh had T-T for the crushing set. Mark still had 30,000 and change, and maintained his composure and focus, climbing back over 50k, but then he ran into a hand in Omaha where he had a ton of outs and the other guy had a made hand, and the board bricked off to knock Mark out in 26th place out of 457 starters for a $7500-ish cash. Obviously a disappointment to get within sight of a final table and not get there, but a remarkably strong performance against a very tough field.

Our famous pal Vanessa Rousso is one of the chip leaders at the end of the night in the RAZZ event, though sadly her fiance Chad Brown busted out near the end of play. Both of them came to join me in cheering on Mark during their breaks from RAZZ, which caused the other players to wonder who this guy was with the big-name fans. Some of it even spilled over onto me - when they left other people on the rail started saying things to me like “wow! you *know* them?”

I will be going back into the WSOP fray tomorrow (Saturday) at noon in another $1500 No-Limit Hold’em event. As before, you can check for updates on my progress HERE where I can send updates from my cell phone.

There should be over 2,000 in the field. I sincerely hope to get through Day 1 so I can force Mark to spend a long day supporting me. If I can come close to his performance today I’ll be thrilled, and if I can surpass him and make it to day 3 (ie the final table) I’ll be giddy. Actually the best scenario would be to give Mark a harried and frantic day on Sunday running back and forth between Vanessa’s RAZZ final table and my $1500 NLHE day 2, followed by getting them both to cheer me on at my final table on Monday, so that my opponents can be the ones wondering who the hell this guy “Huge” is with Vanessa Rousso cheering for him. Yeah, that would be OK.

You can also get updates on my event at cardplayer.com and pokernews.com, but I’m unlikely to get much press unless I go really deep or end up at a table with a celebrity.

I’ve had a lot of tournaments on this trip in which I’ve had good runs, lasted 9 or 10 hours and then busted just short of the money. This would be an excellent time to improve on that trend. Wish me luck…

-huge

so the first exciting news here is that i’m posting this from my new fancy phone. almost as exciting is that mark is still doing well in day 2 of the $2500 potlimit event. shortly after the 3Pm restart he got moved to the table from hell: allen cunningham, eric seidel, min ly, and rolf slotboom all together at one table. but mark is holding his own, treading water at 55000 chips, but still well above average with 55 left, and 45 making the money. as I type this there was a big pot between seidel & cunningham , both directly on mark’s right. good news seidel now gone, bad news cunningham now has tons of chips, good news he’s on mark’s right and probably underestimates mark’s abilities.

more news as it develops…

huge