HugePoker

I’m back in Seattle, in some sort of limbo state adjusting back to the semi-real world I usually inhabit. Not sure what’s next on the HugePoker schedule, other than…

The Gala “Heist” Fundraiser Poker Tournament

Saturday, July 25, 7PM, at an underground location to be revealed if you express interest in attending. OK, it’s not all that underground, and it’s in Seattle, in fact it’s a Princely spot if that gives anyone a clue. Some of you have already received an eVite for the event, some of you probably should have but with my absence from town there might be some gaps between the eVite list and my blog-subscriber list. Here’s a blurb from the Dan-written eVite:

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You are invited to a Gala Poker Tournament and Extravaganza!

The Fat Yeti Club will open for one night only, on Saturday, July 25th, 2009 at 7pm, as a fundraiser for the upcoming production of HEIST!, our first commissioned new play, written by Rachel Atkins and produced by Fat Yeti Theater and Sight Nine Theater.

As a kick-off for this production, we are hosting a No-Limit Texas Hold’em Poker Tournament, including cash prizes, a fabulous no-host bar, Re-buy Babes and Hunks (take my word, worth the price of admission), and more!

If you love poker, this will be the best event of the year. If you want to play but don’t know a flush from a full house, poker pro and cast member Laurence Hughes will be running a pre-tournament tutorial. And even if you don’t play at all, we hope you’ll still come have a drink at the bar and join in the fun!

This is a great new play and we really need your support. Please save the date and RSVP to this evite so we can let you know where to go. This last part is important: if you do not RSVP you will not receive the secret location of The Fat Yeti Club!

We hope to see you on July 25th and we promise you a great time!

Sincerely,

Daniel Morris

Artistic Director

Fat Yeti Theater

HEIST! is based on the hilarious & heart-breaking true story of the 2nd largest cash robbery in US history, in which a team of amateur thieves stole $17 million, and might have gotten away with it, if not for their poor judgment and extreme hubris. Ordinary Americans saw a chance to get rich quick and took it, but they botched their plans at every turn: shopped extravagantly, bought mansions with cash, involved over 20 people in their attempts to hide the money, and even tried to have their inside man killed. Their failings were enormous and absurd, and yet HEIST! is ultimately real and tragic: a story about people who just wanted a better life and the consequences they faced for trying to get ahead.

Featuring Laurence Hughes, Deb Prince, John Ulman, Bob Williams, Brynna Jourden, Kate Kraay, Jaime Roberts and more.

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If you’re interested in coming and playing poker, or coming and drinking, or coming and donating, or, what the hell, just donating … email or phone me or Dan, or leave a comment on this blog, and we’ll send you an official invitation and the location. It really should be a lot of fun, and it’s for a good cause…

-HugePokerTheatre

It’s been a rough one, and I’m both sad and relieved it’s over. Everyone I know who was playing the main event has busted out without cashing. Though my Series as a whole was quite disappointing, I ended it on an up-note with my cash in the Caesar’s Mega-Stack Main Event today. I finished Day 2 with a VERY short stack last night, so short that it seemed almost silly just to come back at 2PM, shove my chips in after one or two hands and then walk away with my meager $2500 prize. Instead I walked in, tripled my stack on the first hand, then built it up to over a million chips (my first time in a live tournament with over 1M), and then went out with guns blazing on one ambitious bluff and one not-so-bad-underdog race with Q2o vs AKo (I was only a 40-60 dog). If the bluff had worked (and I think it often would) I would have had 1.6 million and been in strong contention for the final table. As it was I finished 20th out of 705 starters for a prize of $3898 - not enough to soak up my losses for the trip by any means, but enough to take a little of the sting off.

I’m particularly pleased with some of my play in that tournament, much of which I posted on my twitter page … I made a couple of good moves in situations where I was playing the situation and not my non-existent hand; and I abused the bubble aggressively but not excessively, increasing my stack from 350k to over 600k without ever showing down a hand. All this without running particularly well - I think I won two coinflips and lost three, I had AK beaten by 84o for a big pot, and I never delivered a bad beat to anyone.

I’ll be leaving Vegas in the next couple of days, taking a (hopefully) relaxing road trip back to Seattle and the real world. 6 weeks is a long time in the land of fake cleavage, massive parking garages, 108 degree heat and constant slot machine noise.

Here’s to a better WSOP in 2010…

-huge

In about twelve hours I’ll be diving into day 2 of the main event of the Caesars Palace Mega-Stack Series. This will have to serve as my substitute for the main event of the WSOP - a bit pale in comparison, but I’ve made it to Day 2 with a decent stack, and a deep run to the final table would go a long way towards salving my poker wounds.

They had a bigger field for Day 1B than we had for Day 1A, so something over 700 entrants total. Tomorrow we should have around 280 to start. The final 72 finishers will win money, and we’ll play Day 2 until we play ten levels or reach the final table.

I’m a bit below average stack with 93,000 chips, and Josh is above average with 135,000. Here’s hoping for another long draining day for both of us.

You can follow blow-by-blow updates for me HERE and for Josh HERE

-huge

and Huge is nowhere to be found. It was a sad day today as day 1D - the final “flight” of day 1’s - of the main event got underway and I was rolling out of bed at 12:15PM after a night of coughing and nose-blowing. I had decided several days ago that if things did not improve significantly that I would not cough up the $10,000 for the main event (there’s a sick pun to be had here about other green things I’ve been coughing up), and though I did win one mega-satellite at the Rio, it was not enough to put me in the black for the trip, and I was/am sick, and I’m just not feeling great about poker. It continued to be a bit sad as I sweated (supported or cheered on) Vanessa and Chad and Mark who were all playing today (all made it through day 1: Chad has 60k, Mark 38k, and Venassa had a nasty last half day and ended the day with 7k) but I still feel like I made the right decision not to play.

Sorry I haven’t been reporting much - it’s hard to find the energy to write when things aren’t going well. There certainly have been some poker stories worth writing about, and hopefully I’ll find the time to share some of them here.

Tomorrow, throat and nasal passages permitting, I’ll be playing the main event of the Caesars mega-stack series, a $1060 buyin three-day tournament that is expected to be a big enough field that they need two Day 1’s. It will start with a ridiculously deep stack - I’ll have 50,000 chips with the blinds at 25-50, one hour levels, and the antes won’t kick in until 600-1200 at level 8. It’s kind of insane, but hopefully there will be some idiots in the field ready to make mistakes for a *THOUSAND* big blinds. So that’s my main event this year I guess … disappointing, anticlimactic, but if I make a good score that would be enough to erase all my suffering from the past month.

I’ll post updates on twitter - if you don’t follow my twitter page CLICK HERE to follow my progress. Josh will be playing the event as well, for those of you who met him last week, and he’s a more faithful correspondent than I am … his twitter page (yes that’s his real last name).

I’m disappointed with how this year’s WSOP has gone, but I’m not in terrible shape. I’ve had some good fun, eaten some good food, had a great time with friends visiting, and even had a couple of decent successes at the poker tables, and there are still a few more chances to pull my world series out of the muck. And win or lose, I’m looking forward to my road trip back to Seattle in the new Miata, which has performed … better than me … at this World Series.

The Caesars event starts at noon - less than ten hours - time to get some sleep. Send out the good Hugepoker vibes.

-huge