HugePoker

As my twitter followers already know, I busted out of the main event several hours ago, in the middle of Day 5. I finished 341st out of 7319 players, for a cash prize of $36,431 (or something - can’t remember the exact number). I played the final day with Jean-Robert Bellande on my left and Cole South on his left - a daunting but exciting proposition. Things looked very good for most of the day, as I took my chips from 380,000 to over 600,000 (with Cole getting knocked out along the way), until I ran into a pair of nasty hands - one in which I faced a massive bet from Bellande and either made a smart fold or failed to snap off a big bluff, and the other in which I couldn’t find a fold with KK against a player who had flopped a set of Sevens. The first hand played into the second in a funny way, but I’ll hopefully write about that later - right now I should collapse to try and recover from the ugly cold that continues to torment me before my road trip back to Seattle.

It is a weird weird feeling to be so completely immersed in something and then in one moment have it just vaporize. After three consecutive days of making difficult decisions about tens of thousands of dollars worth of chips, I went to the wrong parking area to get my car, and then was nearly incapable of deciding where to go for dinner (ended up going back to Pho Kim Long, where I’ve gone for the last two dinner breaks - I guess I just wanted to pretend). It’s a major poker cliche that the worst day of the year is the day you bust out of the main event. I’m not sure that’s true for me, but it might be the emptiest day of the year. I feel great about how I played - with a few exceptions I think I played some of my best poker, and while there is obvious disappointment about not making a truly deep run or a six-digit score or bettering my 2007 cash or making the “November Nine”, at the end of the day I’ve got a check for over $36,000, and I’ve cashed in three out of the four main events I’ve played, and I’m pretty happy about all of that. Still kinda empty though.

Thank you all for your support, blog comments, tweets, text messages, internet research and spying, and actual physical in-the-room cheering. I have to confess that a big part of the thrill of the WSOP for me comes from knowing that a bunch of people - some I know and love, some I’ve never met - are watching my progress on twitter or in the blog or in person, getting excited as I get deeper in the tournament, groaning when I take a hit to my stack, cheering when I double up or pull off a big bluff, and maybe feeling a hint of my own deflation when I bust out. The last two WSOP’s it’s been disappointing to not give my fans anything to get all that excited about, and I’m really glad I got to create some good buzz again this year … partly because I’m such a giver and love to bring a little excitement into other peoples’ lives, but mostly because I just like all the attention. It’s fun to be a little bit of a star for a few days, I just wish I could have drug it out a few more.

My 2010 World Series of Poker is in the books - a small but solid success. I’ll take it.

huge

Day Four is in the books. I need to sleep, so I’m not going to write one of my usual epics. I’ll cut and paste my twitter posts instead. To read them in order you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom and read upwards…

(or you can search for the phrase “DAY 4 BEGINS”)

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# 574 players left. $24,079 guaranteed. I have 382,000 chips. Average is … 382,526 17 minutes ago via web

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got stuck on hold over half an hour to extend my room. Totally ruined my night. Life sucks. 44 minutes ago via web

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damn! only 382k bagged and tagged. resisted urges to get frisky. very happy with my end-of-night play about 2 hours ago via dabr

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playing 3 more hands, ending on my big blind. could it be another stretcher moment? feels familiar. about 2 hours ago via dabr

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several nice pots, including attempted flat-float-bluff J7s accidentally turned 2pr. not sure, but think over 400k about 2 hours ago via dabr

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while charging phone @ press table I blinded off, then lost two blind vs blind hands. 215k about 2 hours ago via dabr

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sent us on break for color-up 500 chips. about to head back, then play an hour. done around 11:30. franticalLy charging phone about 3 hours ago via dabr

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cell battery dying. spare may or may not work. we play 80 more minutes then we’re done. have to extend hotel reservation about 4 hours ago via dabr

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287k after paying blinds. about 4 hours ago via dabr

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money about 4 hours ago via dabr

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I think it’s done? about 4 hours ago via dabr

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massive crowd gathering one table away. about 4 hours ago via dabr

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UTG raises I fold J4 he shows QQ. ESPN running again… about 4 hours ago via dabr

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ESPN dispersed, but a hand must be happening somewhere … oops, no bustout. hand number 6. Im in BB about 4 hours ago via dabr

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forgot to mention … 1 player left. about 4 hours ago via dabr

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ESPN cameras running to a nearby table. we can’t leave our seats to look or we get a penalty. about 4 hours ago via dabr

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nope couldn’t fold. stole with A7, short stack folded Tens. close to 300k. waiting for hand number 5. about 4 hours ago via dabr

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lost 1 more, dealing hand number 4, just give me something I can fold! about 4 hours ago via dabr

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he says he had QQ, makes sense. 285k. got my heart pounding there. he played it bad about 4 hours ago via dabr

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I raise 12000 w/AK, dude makes it 24K, I call. flop K-high, I check he bet 24000, I checkraise to 65k, he says “Ace King?” and folds. about 4 hours ago via dabr

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dealing hand number 3 about 4 hours ago via dabr

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kido pham busted at next table over about 5 hours ago via dabr

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back at table. grueling hand-for-hand commences momentarily. about 5 hours ago via dabr

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4 players to go and they’re sending us on dinner break. massive chorus of boos when they announced that. time for some more pho… about 6 hours ago via dabr

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6 players left. hand-for-hand about 7 hours ago via dabr

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8 players. 225k. still not hand-for-hand (!?) about 7 hours ago via dabr

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18 players to go. 200k about 7 hours ago via dabr

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783 players. 36 to go. 212k. table probably thinks I’m maniac, but I’ve been catching cards. about 7 hours ago via dabr

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woman shoves 60k w/77, I calL from BB with JJ and hold. back to 220k about 7 hours ago via dabr

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165k about 8 hours ago via dabr

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moved to new table (damn), lose coinflip w/TT vs AQs (he makes flush on river). 145k. about 8 hours ago via dabr

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846 players. 99 to die before the money. about 8 hours ago via dabr

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massive traffic jam at X-roads by Amazon room. break should be over but not letting us in. bubble sweat is overpowering. smells like victory about 8 hours ago via dabr

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227k at break. could fold into the money now. not going to. about 9 hours ago via dabr

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call raise with TT, flop is Q-high but he checks & I take it down. 205k. about 9 hours ago via dabr

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small blind open shoves I have AK and call, he has KT. I hold. 185k about 9 hours ago via dabr

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took small pot from Lodden w/AK, but then blinded off 2 orbits. 85k about 10 hours ago via dabr

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under 1000 players from 7319. still a long way to go to make the money (747 of us will get at least $19k) about 11 hours ago via dabr

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lost a couple, won a couple, then ugly leveling battle gone bad. 95K. Lodden claimed 1st victim cracking AA w/A3s in 300k pot. about 11 hours ago via dabr

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at TGIF for breakfast of champioN all by myself (sniff). Johnny Lodden at my table today with mountain of chips. should be fun

DAY 4 BEGINS

I got my table draw this morning, and I have a weird poker celbrity at my table - sort of the Kevin Bacon of poker. Look up the wikipedia entry for Johnny Lodden to get the details of the game invented around him called “what does Lodden think?”

He has a mountain of chips, and he is thankfully 3 to my right. It should be exciting.

stay tuned on twitter.com/hugepoker

I bagged and tagged 130,300 chips at the end of Day 3, just over double what I started with at Noon. I’m still below average (170K) with 1400-ish players remaining our of 7300-ish starters. Tomorrow when we get down to 747 players, we’ll all be in the money (min cash is $19,000+).

I’m happy with my performance today - doubled my stack without ever winning a big pot, and without ever having a big hand with multistreet action. I flopped two sets, but one of them got no action and the other got counterfeited by a straight on the board.

No more days off until we get to the final 9 (and then we have months off). Day four is Noon tomorrow - time for Huge to sleep.

I’m laying in bed at Bellagio, laptop on my lap-top, propped up on pillows watching CNN, trying to shake the nasty cold that showed up 48 hours ago. It’s both good and bad timing - obviously it sucks to be sick for day 2 of the main event of the WSOP, but it didn’t really hurt my focus too badly yesterday, and I feel very fortunate that I don’t have to be playing poker today. I’m hoping that the peak of my illness was 4:00 this morning, and now I’ve got two days off to get over it before I go back for Day 3 at Noon on Monday.

I ended Day 2 with 63,900 chips, which will be a little below average going into Day 3, but a perfectly healthy, playable stack. I’ve got my seating assignment for Day 3 - I haven’t researched my opponents yet, but the chip lineup doesn’t look good - I have 4 much larger stacks on my left, so it’s going to be hard to raise through them. There’s a tiny 10,000 chip stack on my right, which is sort of good and bad - I’d rather have more chips on my right because chips tend to flow clockwise around the table, but at least I should be able to make good decisions when he shoves instead of having to worry every time I raise whether he will take a stand and shove over the top of me.

Yesterday was about as different from Day 1 for me as I could imagine. The table was relatively conservative, with not a lot of fireworks early in the day. Even later in the evening big pots generally were only played with big hands, and no-one really took on the mantle of table-captain. We only busted two players, and the chip leader coming into the day lost ground, so no-one built a massive stack. Given all that, and my sickness, I’m pretty happy to come out of the day with 63,900. I probably could have benefited from some more selective aggression, since I seemed to be getting a lot of respect from the table and had a good feel for who I should tangle with and who to avoid … it’s possible I could have extracted more from that setup (but it’s always possible that I would have just gotten myself into trouble trying).

The key hand for me early on was another full house … I’m in the BB with QT facing three limpers, and I’m happy but not crazed when I see a QJ3 flop. I check, one of the limpers bets, and two of us call. The turn is a nice but scary Ten. I’m not really worried about AK in a limped pot, but K9 or 98 are possible. I need to worry about draws more though - if someone has KQ or KJ or AT or 99 or A9 (the list goes on) I’m ahead of them but they have a lot of outs. I’m prepared to lay the hand down if it really looks like I’m beat, but I think I have to charge a solid admission price to anyone who wants to outdraw me. I bet 2/3 of the pot and only the UTG limper calls. I get ready to just check-call the river unless a 4th straight card falls (in which case I’m probably check-folding), and then BINGO! A Ten hits on the river, giving me a full house. I don’t know what UTG has, but he called the turn so I think I should go for value on the river. I bet 5200 and he tanks forever, finally calling and claiming he had AK. If true, he limped AK preflop and then slowplayed the nuts on the turn, and he deserves the bite I took out of him.

That hand took me up to 58K, and I got up as high as 75K before running TT into JJ and luckily only losing about 12K.

We started with 2412 players and finished with 1200. When today (2B) is finished we’ll have the total numbers and average chip count for Day 3. The tournament as a whole had 7300-ish entrants, and 1st prize will be $8,944,138 (actually I’ve heard ESPN is chipping in the extra dough to round it up to $9M). They will pay down to 747th place, who will receive $19,263.

While writing this I just received a scouting report from Chad, who knows a couple of the players at my Day 3 table - pretty nice to have a top pro giving me intel about my opponents.

Monday Noon, Day 3, stay tuned.

bagged and tagged 64,900 chips

still have nasty cold

must
enter
coma
now

It has come to my attention that a couple of you have tried to get through to me either by text message or using twitter, without success. I think that I need to be following your twitter account for a tweet from you to show up in my timeline. If you want me to follow your twitter account, send me an email message or text (see below) or leave a comment here.

My regular cell number won’t take text messages - if you want to send me a text message you need to send it to my google voice number. I don’t want to put the number in plain text here, but it’s the normal area code for Seattle, followed by the words JOY-TAXI (look on a phone keypad to figure out the numbers).

Yes, I’m up at 6:30AM. No, it’s not nerves over going back for day 2. Actually I wish it were just nerves - I woke up yesterday with a sore throat and I was hoping it was just Vegas dry air getting to me, but today the sore throat is back and I clearly have a head cold to go with it, and I’m having trouble sleeping. I can get them to bring me tea and honey at the table - if you have any great cold-symptom-reduction ideas for me, send them my way. I’ll try to get a little more sleep before meeting Team Huge for the old $4.99 breakfast of champions at TGIF at the Gold Coast.

Speaking of Team Huge, they’ve been making great runs in tournaments so far, with Dan and Deb coming close to the money, Pete with one min-cash, and Maya hitting her (by far) best cash ever for $1700 at the nightly Caesars $80 tournament. So proud of my Hugettes!!!

As usual, you can get my updates on Twitter.com (@hugepoker),

or the poker news live updates (click on the Day 2a tab if it doesn’t take you there automatically).

There’s also the pokerstars blog

I got my table assignments, and was amused to see a guy I know on my left for today, and Avery Cardoza (old time poker publisher & author) also will be at my table - will have to wait and see if that turns out to be good or bad news.

Sniffly-Coughy-Huge

I endured the most frustrating 8 hours of my poker career between the noon start time and 8:00 dinner break. I didn’t lose any massive pots, but everything went wrong - I had lots of good starting hands to see cheap flops with, but never hit anything more than marginal top pair hands. I lost two sizeable pots with AJ, once against J9 on a 932A9 board, and once against AQ on a AT3A9 board (pleased I didn’t lose a lot more on that one). I did win a couple of decent pots to stave off oblivion, but by the time dinner break rolled around, my 30K starting stack had been amputated down to 13K, and I was not happy.

I was pretty psyched about my table at first, as it seemed like the tougher players were on my right and the bad ones on my left. The prime example of the latter category was a little blonde bimbo who people kept coming over to photograph. After she busted (spectacularly) we learned that she was a Playboy model and wife of some famous rock-star. She busted on a KT9T board when a guy bet 7500, she put out 3 5000 chips, the dealer said “raise” and she argued that she was only calling and took back one of the chips(!) Of course it was ruled a raise, her opponent reraised all-in and she only had 8000 chips left and called, and her opponent had 99 for the boat. Sadly for the rest of the table a miracle queen did not materialize on the river, and our little cutie was gone.

The old codger on my left who loved to “reraise those internet kids!” also busted mid-day, in fairly stupidendous fashion. So the two best targets for me to shoot at got blasted by others, and I was left with the sharks.

The first hand after dinner I won a nice little pot with a flat-float-bluff maneuver, giving me a glimmer of hope for a comeback. about a half hour later, hope materialized. After 3-betting JJ and getting called in 2 spots, I didn’t like the King on the flop, but I really liked the Jack on the turn, and I especially liked the paired Ten on the river, giving me a full ouse. I played the turn cagily and got my opponent to stack off on the river, doubling me up to 30K. Indescribable sigh of relief.

TWO HANDS LATER, I flopped trips with T9s on a TT8 flop, and hit ANOTHER FULL HOUSE with a 9 on the turn, and got the very tough player to pay off a sizeable bet on the river when a Queen hit. I feel good about how I played both hands, extracting maximum value from both, and getting me up over 40K.

I finished the night with 40250 chips, right around average. There are more stories from the end of the night, but I’m sitting by the Bellagio pool, so I’m going to stop thumbing on my phone keyboard.

My Day 2A will start tomorrow at Noon (Day 2B is Saturday, Sunday is a day off for everyone, and the whole surviving fielf returns for Day 3 on Monday). Stay tuned…

huge

I’m playing Day 1C of the main event in about 10.5 hours.

Not much more to say as it’s time for sleep.

Follow my personal updates on twitter

Follow the general live updates on pokernews.

GO ME!

p.s. My friend Ace played his Day 1 already, and busted out with AA all-in preflop against KK. I told him that made me feel better about busting out in exactly the same way from the $1K event, and thanked him for that.

After my ugly Ace-whooping 10-minute blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance in the $1000 bracelet event on Thursday, my frustration continued. The only apparent benefit of busting out after TEN MINUTES in the Noon event was that I could go ahead and play the 1PM $200 event (also at the Rio). As I was putting together a pretty good run in the 1PM, I thought it would be funny if making my (by far) fastest ever exit from a WSOP event would lead to my best cash for the year. But, as it turned out, what would be funnier still, according to some poker god with a sick sense of humor that I do not appreciate, would be to have me last six hours instead of ten minutes, and then have me bust out by HAVING MY ACES CRACKED AGAIN. The hand went a little differently, and this time the culprit was deuces instead of Kings, but still, I mean, COME ON!

Friday the sadness continued. I went back to the Wynn to try and salve my wounds by beating up on the idiots, but at first I played badly to lose half of my stack, and then I lost by turning a flush when someone else had a higher flush. I lost at the Wynn so fast that I could pop back over to the Rio for the 1PM deepstack, I had one fun hand there early on where I actually bluffed a guy off of a set (the river put a fourth club on the board) and then showed him my 4-2 of diamonds. I don’t usually show bluffs, but I thought this guy was weak and possibly drunk and that it might tilt him. It didn’t seem to - we ended up talking about the hand, and he started to seem not all that drunk or all that weak, and we became pretty chummy. So instead of tilting the guy and making him play bad, I figured out that he wasn’t as bad as I thought he was - not the benefit I was looking for, but helpful nonetheless. After that I never really built a big stack, and when the blinds got big enough I had to shove 65s, got called by AJ - not the worst thing I could see, and I said “OK, I like it”, and then the dealer laid down JJ3 and I said “I don’t like it” and I was crippled, and out soon thereafter. I finished 160th out of 500 - another sort of decent run but not really close to winning the money. After that I went for a third time to the cleverly named Pho Kim Long for Vietnamese food with Josh. I got a call from Mark that the numbers were good for the 9PM $550 mega satellite, which I was thinking about playing anyway, so we hustled back to the Rio and I got in about 20 minutes late. Compared to the other tournaments I’ve been playing the $550 mega is kind of a psycho-turbo - you start with only 4000 chips and the blinds go 25-50 50-100 100-200 100-200/25 200-400/50 yikes! This one was just dreary for me - I was card-dead from the start and barely played any hands until three hours in when I had to shove with 44, and lost a coin flip to A9. So yesterday was a triple-header bust.

Today I got up early enough to walk over to the Gold Coast to have my Breakfast of Champions - the TGI Fridays $4.99 breakfast special (eggs, hash browns, sausage and toast), and got back to the Rio almost in time to register in time for the 1PM $1060 mega satellite to take a second stab at a $10,000 main event seat. More dreariness, with just a slightly different flavor: In the first hour I had *seven* pocket pairs, all 66 or lower, saw flops with all of them, flopped no sets, and lost every pot. I somehow managed to get to the first break with 5000 of my 6000 starting chips, but soon drifted down as low as 4000 before hitting my first hand, turning a straight with KQ. When a third diamond fell on the river it gave me a little bit of a scare, but it may have just allowed my opponent to bluff at the pot - I called, he grimaced, I said “I have a straight”, and he mucked.

An even bigger thrill-ride came when the Pokerstars Pro on my right (not sure who he was, but he had the jersey and the patch) shoved from the cutoff with Q8-spades for most of my stack, and I was happy to look down and find KK. I was not so happy to see the flop of 85J with two spades. We’re pretty much flipping a coin, as he needs any eight, any Queen or any spade to beat me. Sure enough, Queen on the turn and he has two pair and it looks like I’m pretty much out. BUT WAIT! A Five on the river gives me a better two pair, and the Stars Pro makes his exit, and suddenly I’ve got a big stack.

From there I mostly treaded water for a while, getting down to 1/3 of the 480 entrants, by which point my big stack was a merely average 20K chips. I won a coin flip 77 vs. AQ to chip up to 27K, I bounced between 30K and 40K until we were down to 75 players, and the tension was starting to mount - 45 of us would get $10,200 and the slightly unlucky 46th place finisher would get $6600 in cash. It was here that I pulled off the first (and the milder) of my two luckbox moments. It was folded around to me in the small blind, and the short stack in the big blind started mumbling about how if he had anything at all we were going to tangle - a pretty clear attempt to send me the message that I’d better just give him a walk if I didn’t want to gamble. He had about 3.5 BB, so I was going to shove on him with any two cards, because honestly I knew that all his mumbling was just bluster and that he would fold if he didn’t have a pretty good hand. But when I saw A2s there was no thought required, and when he actually AGONIZED before calling with 99 I knew my assessment was right about his calling range, which didn’t much help with the fact that he had the better hand. The 445 flop brought a little hope, but the Ace on the turn was the real killer, and MAN was he pissed as he walked off.

As we got closer to the bubble I had another nail biter when I shoved with A4s and the SB thought forever before folding AQ face-up (WHY on earth do they do that??? I mean do they WANT me to ravage them over and over?? What does he POSSIBLY hope to gain by showing the table that he’ll fold a good hand in the blinds?). I told him “yeah we were racing - I had Jacks” and then followed up with “we both didn’t want you to call”.

With 53 players left I had blinded down to a very precarious 28K, and was about to get chewed down further in two more hands, and AQ looked more than good enough, setting up luckbox moment number two. I shoved, the button asked for my stack to be counted down and started a long process of deliberation. Now on the one hand if he’s thinking that hard he’s not likely to have me badly beaten, but on the other he’s likely to have a pair for a coin flip, and even if I’m ahead I’d rather just have him fold this close to a satellite bubble. When he finally calls I just pray he might have AJs, which would be a bad call but possible, or that I can win a coin flip against Eights or something like that, BUT WAIT! He has … pocket Queens! Yuck! So it’s actually to his credit that he had a card time calling with QQ that close to the money, and afterward he said that it might have been a bad call, and I agreed - it seems borderline … with KK I think he has to call and with JJ or AK I think he has to fold, but QQ is pretty tough. He wouldn’t be crippled if he lost the hand, but he would go from a very safe stack to a pretty vulnerable one. Oh, sorry, you want to know what happened. Well, that’s simple - Ace on the flop, and on the river for good measure, and I double up to 64K, eight spots away from the money. And now I’ve got a pretty safe stack.

There were a few tense moments when I got shorter and some super-short stacks tripled or quadrupled up, but after an orbit in which the big stack inexplicably gave me a walk, and then I stole the BB from a stack who couldn’t possibly call me with anything, I was pretty close to a lock. After a few minutes of the old hand-for-hand, and surprisingly little talk of trying to orchestrate a 46-way deal, the true bubble-boy busted out, and then the $6600 booby-prize-winner, and we were all in.

I collect $10,000 in buyin chips and $200 in cash. This doesn’t require me to play the main event (I could sell the chips for cash) but I will. I was feeling pretty confident of playing the main event after a few small successes lately and I’ve been feeling pretty good about my play for the most part, but it still would have been difficult to pony up the $10,000 if I were to burn through a few thousand bucks trying to win a seat without success. Now I just have to win two or three more so I can play the main event as a totally relaxed freeroll. This is the big mega-satellite weekend, so there will be lots of opportunities…

Oh yeah, the title of the post … in recent years all the cool internet kids started saying “Bink!” when a card would come to win them a hand, or they would win a tournament, or just generally anything good would happen. Then the *really* cool thing was to use it as a verb, as in “I binked the 5 on the turn for the gutshot and stacked the donkey” or in my case “I just binked a main event seat! How awesome is that?”. What could be cooler and hipper than bringing it back to nounhood with “binkage”? Answer: none cooler.

huge