HugePoker

I’ve been cutting back on the poker a bit recently for the sake of another romp on the boards (translation for the theatre-impaired: I’ve been rehearsing a play). The show is called “Durang7”, which I guess is officially spoken as “Durang to the 7th power”, but I refuse to call it that because it sounds totally gay (apologies to my gay readers – you know what I mean – actually one brief scene in the show is, in fact, literally gay, and it’s pretty funny, and I’m in it, so I am at least for a brief moment getting back to my Seattle theatre roots of 15 years ago when I could only ever get cast as a gay man … but I digress). So the Huge-approved title “Durang7” denotes seven one-act plays by quintessentially clever playwright Christopher Durang, and it opens tonight and runs through November 22, at Stone Soup Theatre.

Here’s the website and yes that’s me in a toga.

Reviews have been pretty good, if a bit odd/bland:

The Seattle Times says we’re “very game actors”. Thanks, Misha!!!!

The Seattle Weekly, calls us “generally palatable”! YES!

The Seattle Gay News, who always seem to love me, calls us “bouncy” and a “solid ensemble” (I don’t often think of bouncy and solid as complimentary adjectives, but OK) and refers to “a pregnant [?] sense that [the] Father, played by Laurence Hughes, is really a batterer and maybe even an incestuous pervert”. AWESOME!

Tickets are $20, $16 for seniors, and $13 for anyone UNDER THIRTY(!?). You can also get 4 tickets for $60, so bring your friends. Thursdays are pay-what-you-will, and there are “talk-backs” after the show each Thursday.

As is often the pattern with me when I do a show, I’ve been hesitant to broadcast about it in the last week or two of rehearsal for fear that it would suck, but last night we had our preview in front of an actual audience, two or three of whom might have actually paid to get in, and it went pretty well and the audience seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. So maybe it doesn’t suck.

We actually had a camera crew record one of our recent rehearsals, and there will be some sort of segment on the show on “Art Zone with Nancy Guppy”, which will have its first airing, oddly enough, at the exact moment we open the curtain on our opening night, 8PM tonight on “the Seattle Channel”, which is channel 21 on Seattle cable systems. There will be lots of other airings as well, or you can watch it streaming on the web. I have no idea what the segment will look like or how much of the show footage they’ll put on the air, or if it will suck, but hey, I’m sure as hell not getting on TV for playing poker lately, so at least maybe I can get a little exposure in the theatre.

[edit: by clicking on the link above and then clicking "watch" you'll play the show on your screen. The segment about our show starts around 11 minutes in]

If you’re in or around Seattle, come see it. If you’re coming to see it, let me know beforehand and stick around afterwords to say hi or go out for a drink or a snack.

Broken-leggedly,
-huge

I’ve just played my last hand of Aruban poker for 2009. I’ve got tomorrow morning to sit on the beach, then off to the airport. Poker-wise the trip was a mixed-bag – I failed to cash in either of the big events I played, so my two shots at winning buckets of money came up short, but in each case I won my entry into the tournament, so that takes away some of the sting. On the good side, some of the little stuff went my way…

I had good success in the single-table tournaments at the Radisson – I played 8 of them and cashed in 5, with 1 3rd place finish and 4 outright wins. One of those wins involved a comeback from 1.5 big blinds on the bubble, and since I had no 2nd place finishes, that means I was 4-for-4 when I got down to heads-up play.

I played 3 of the $540 events at the Radisson, with a good run in one of them (16th of 95, when they were paying the final 9) and nursing a short stack to the final table in another, finishing 6th for $1560, so basically broke even for the 3 tournaments.

I busted out of the main event at the Radisson late on Day 1, which is a big fat ugly drag. That tournament was the main reason I came here, and it’s very disappointing to go out on Day 1. It was a very rough day for me, but I’ve already posted about the coolers and the coinflip. It was hard, it was sad, I didn’t win a million dollars.

I won my seat into the crazy Holiday Inn tournament on the first try, which is at least a good savings since the qualifiers cost $2500 and I would have played at least one or two more before giving up. I felt good about how I played in the qualifier, and got a chance to chat it up with former world champ and noted poker author Tom McEvoy, who paid me the compliment of saying that he hated having me on his left at the final table (actually he went on to say that “when I’ve got someone like you who’s really aggressive on my left it makes me play better” which I thought was funny since I just don’t think I’m all *that* aggressive, but I enjoyed it all the same, and immediately started thinking about how to exploit my hyper-aggressive image if I got him on my right again in the final event).

I’ve had stupidly good luck playing … umm … blackjack? I don’t really play blackjack since I was in my 20’s when I learned to count cards, got decent enough at it to believe I had an edge and could make some money, at which point it became mind-numbingly dull and I switched to playing poker, which has held my interest a bit better. But I’ll still play blackjack if I can get my hands on some “match play” coupons (OK Dan, go ahead and laugh). A match play coupon adds extra value to an even-money bet at blackjack or roulette or any other table game. You put up $10 in chips and set them on top of your $10 coupon, and if you win you win $20, and if you lose you only lose $10. I’ll let you do the math, but the coupons are worth a little less than $5 each, and if you were to use 100 of them you should expect to end up with a little less than $500. But I don’t have a hundred – you can gather them out of the “Aruba Gourmet” and “Aruba Island Life” and other tourist guide/magazines that can be found all over the place here, and while I guess it would be easy enough to collect a hundred of them, they technically restrict you to one per person per day, though they don’t seem to check … anyway, I think I’ve used about 20 of them, and I’m up $220, over double the expected value of the coupons … pretty damn exciting, eh?! If only I could run that good at poker.

But sometimes I do, just not in the most important moments … two nights ago I flopped bottom 2-pair in a cash game when my opponent flopped the nut straight on a 2-3-6 flop (don’t go hatin’ on me, I was in the big blind). Good money went in on the flop and turn, but all the money went in when a deuce hit on the river giving me a full house. Thanks to that hand and a couple of other beauties I walked away from the game with a $1400 profit. The few other cash games I played were close to a wash, but that session made things OK overall.

The big crazy event at the Holiday Inn was disappointing – especially the final moment. I flopped a set early on to build up some chips, but then got caught bluffing to drop down below my starting stack level. I got back up, then down, and after all this up and down the blinds got up to a dangerous level and I found pocket Queens at just the right time. The player on my right shoved for a few more chips than I had, I happily called, got more happy when he turned over J-9, got a little queasy when the flop came 7-8-9, cringed when the turn brought a Ten, and packed up my bags when the river failed to deliver a Jack. As I posted on my twitter page, I’m pretty sure I had like 80% of the good players in the tournament at my table, which sucked. There are a couple of hands that trouble me because I’m not sure if I mis-played them … perhaps I’ll post them when I get home. But it sucked to bust out like that – if I win the hand with QQ vs J9 I get back to an average stack with 18 players left and 9 getting the good money, with a perfectly viable shot at the $100,000 first prize. As it is I’ll just have to wait for next year.

I’m flying home with more cash than I landed with, but then I landed with a $5500 entry into the main event and that went up in smoke on the big coinflip, so the trip has to be considered a(nother) loss, but with a few bright spots. And sitting on the beach wasn’t too bad.

-huge

I won my seat into the final event at the Excelsior Casino at the Holiday Inn on Tuesday night. This will be the third year in a row I’ve qualified for the final - I’ve written about it before, but it’s a weird structure, with bad players, incompetent dealers, floor-people who try hard but don’t really have that much experience running a big tournament, and it’s the best shot I ever get at a six-figure tournament prize (they guarantee $100,000 for 1st prize, and they will probably only have 35-40 players).

I’ll try to write up the tournament stories soon, but for now I’m just very glad to have won my seat on the first try … the qualifiers cost $2500, so winning it in one shot is a whole lot better than taking three or four stabs at it.

My friend Jeremy just departed for chilly Chicago - it was great to have him here. If anyone else wants to hop on a plane for a last minute vacation, I’ll be here until the 14th.

I’m off to the Radisson for some more single-table action, which I’ve been crushing so far - 3 outright wins in 4 tournaments. Hopefully I can keep picking up pocket change that way while I wait for the big event on Sunday night…

-huge

I busted out of the main event in Aruba today, 6.5 hours into day 1. It was a rough day, at a particularly tough table, including Matt Graham, online and live poker star with two WSOP bracelets (who I busted out of the tournament, but he was pretty short-stacked by then so it didn’t help me all that much). I ran badly in various ways, not suffering any terrible bad beats but running into several “coolers”, not getting paid off all that well when I hit big hands, and in the end busting out on a massive coinflip for 18,000 chips.

I turned the nut flush as another guy turned a full house.

I hit top pair-top kicker against middle set, and got into more trouble when I turned top-two pair, but managed to fold to a raise on the turn in a massive 3-way pot.

It seemed like I had my continuation bets raised or checkraised every time I was making a move, and got little or no action when I nailed the flop.

In the end I got all my money in on a coinflip with AK against JJ, and lost the coinflip. I’m back and forth in my brain about whether or not I overplayed the hand. I raised, he reraised big, and I shoved … I correctly assessed that he wouldn’t make that strong a move with AA or KK, which were the only hands way ahead of me, but maybe I should have preserved my chips and waited for a better spot.

But my main event is done. There are more tournaments at the Radisson that I might play, but my primary focus shifts to the wacky Holiday Inn tournament, qualifiers for which start tomorrow night. I don’t know if I’ll have wifi access to be able to twitter updates from there, and that tournament is so weird that daily blog updates probably make more sense anyway. One way or the other I’ll let you know what’s going on…

huge

Headed over to the Radisson to play day 1 of the main event of the Aruba Classic. $1 Million for first place, probably around 500 players to beat.

Jeremy arrived last night and we had a very funny time at the welcome banquet, including a very drunk very large man coming up to us saying that he was looking for (among other things) some “North American dick”.

I seemed to have worked out the twitter problems yesterday, so hopefully today will be easier for the twitter updates.

Here we go…

huge

First single table tournament - just about the worst group of players imaginable … I busted out in 5th for $0.

Second single table tournament - just about the toughest group you could put together here … and I won it, for $620.

Played the 7PM $540 tournament, and doubled up on the first hand (not sure that’s ever happened to me before in a tournament of any significance) - I raised a UTG limper from early position with AKo, button and UTG call. Flop comes QJT (umm, OK) and UTG just shoves for 6 times the pot (umm, OK OK OK OK!). I continued the good run until we got down to two tables … They were paying 10 players out of 95 starters, with $15,000 for the winner. I got my chips in with AQ vs JJ and couldn’t win the coinflip, out in 16th for no money…

Frustrating, but life’s not too terrible I guess…

Also frustrating has been trying to post news on twitter on my phone over the wifi connection at the Radisson. Hopefully I’ll fix it for tomorrow and you’ll be able to follow my progress at http://twitter.com/hugepoker

And it may be too late now that he’s already replied to my last post whining about how I hadn’t mentioned him, but Jeremy will be joining me tomorrow night for a few days. Ironically I noticed today a flier for daily poker lessons at the Radisson intended for all the “poker widows” … since my actual poker widow can’t make the trip this year, I guess that will make Jeremy my poker widow-on-the-side. I think maybe those lessons will be a golden opportunity for Jeremy to swoop down and provide much-needed attention to all the neglected wives and lonely girlfriends of all the poker players here…

OK, day one mostly a wash … hopefully day two will look up.

-huge

huge

i’ve had a quick swim, now lunch, then poker. There’s a 200 rebuy satellite at 4pm, a 500 freezeout at 7, and single table satelites running all the time.

it looks like i’ll have internet access on my phone, so i’ll post on my twitter page when i can, and here when i have a bigger report to file.

i still don’t know whether i’ll be starting the main event on monday or tuesday.

for those of you who have money invested in my poker escapades, first of all yes you still have some of your investment left after the last couple of disappointing results, and second of all yes your money will be going into battle again here in Aruba. sorry i haven’t been in touch more directly - i don’t have access to my invetor email list here.

cross your fingers for the hugepoker show in Aruba … hopefully Hugetember can spill over a bit

-huge

I’m in Atlanta, waiting for my flight to Aruba. My flight from Seattle was uneventful, but I’ve been upgraded for the next leg and will be in seat 1A, which seems like it must be a lucky way to start the venture.

Tomorrow is the official start of festivities, and I expect to be playing at least the main event satellite. The main event itself starts on the 5th.
l
Just sat down in my lovely 1st class seat, have already seen three players I know, including ‘Fat Jimmy’ who I got to know last year in Aruba.

Time to turn the phone off … more news to follow, good or bad…

huge