HugePoker

I hopped in my car and barreled home, arriving late Sunday night. I only stopped to take naps, get gas, and have dinner in Portland with Team Huge members Melissa and Tom - roughly 20 hours of driving in 30 hours elapsed time. I’m happy to be home, greeted warmly by wife and dog (I don’t remember if I’ve reported this in the blog, but while I was in Vegas we made official our adoption of Alfie, who we had been fostering). It is always a weird transition time after leaving Vegas, and this year is no exception. After a month of focusing only on poker, jumping between frozen A/C and 108-degree outdoor temps, and eating a lot of beef … Seattle is an odd kind of fresh-air shock to the system.

I think I have less disappointment at busting out of the main event than I have in past years, which is a little surprising given that I built up my stack nicely on Day 3 and then got all my chips in the middle as a dominating favorite (with AKs vs KQs) and got pretty unlucky to bust out. A lot of factors temper my reaction … I’ve been less focused on poker this year; I had the nice score at the Wynn on my first day off between day 2 and day 3 of the main event which took some pressure off; I went into Day 3 with such a short stack that I half-expected to get all my chips in in the first hour and bust out; and I felt very good about the way I played my bust-out hand, applying a good read on my opponent to feel confident that my AKs was in great shape against his range. That’s not to say that it wasn’t crushing - getting bad-beated out of the main event when winning the hand would have given me above-average chips approaching the money-bubble sucks really really hard, but I recovered pretty quickly and am not wallowing too badly now.

ESPN has been doing something very different this year - they’re broadcasting semi-live video of the featured tables, and sometimes even showing hole-cards after the hand is over. Today is the last day of play - they started the day with 22 players and will play down to the fabled “November 9″. It’s actually a great broadcast, with a higher level of commentary than you see on the typical over-edited ESPN coverage. If you like watching poker, or if you just want to get a feel for what I go through every year, this is the best opportunity to do so. I think you can watch it on regular TV, but I’ve been watching it on the web:

http://espn.go.com/espn3/player?id=203064&league=WSOP

They might be stopping coverage soon and resuming at 5PM-7PM (Pacific time), and then again at 9PM until they get down to the final table. They just got down to 18 and are redrawing seats for two tables. One of the Irish gang who I’ve met a few times is second in chips and playing very well - Eoghan O’Dea. The matchup between him and the Ukrainian chip leader and the certain Player-of-the-Year winner Ben Lamb will be very exciting to watch. Check it out if you can - if you’re accustomed to the normal inanity of Norman Chad in the ESPN after-the-fact broadcast, this will be a nice change.

Thanks for all the support for the past month.

-huge