Posts Tagged ‘Las Vegas’

My starting table had not a lot of chips but a couple of notable players, including Owen “ocrowe” Crowe, Andrew Chen, Jonathan “driverseati” Tamayo, and Lauren Kling. We broke after less than an hour, but I still managed to play a few interesting pots. Also, a very friendly reader named Mark (hi, Mark) recognized me from the Blog and introduced himself, which was cool. A kid at the PCA recognized my voice from Poker Savvy, but I think this is the first time a blog reader I didn’t already know has recognized me.

500/1000/100, I open complete 73o in the SB, Lauren checks.

Flop Ks Js Jc, I check planning to call a bet and bluff river. She checks behind.

Turn 7c, I check, she bets 3000, I call.

River 9d, we check, I show my hand, and it’s good. Owen comments on my playing 73o and predicts that I won’t be giving a lot of walks.  Read the complete post...

75/150 I limp UTG with Ac Qc. Folds to the SB, who completes, and BB checks.

Flop Js Td 9s. Checks to me, I bet 300, SB calls. I think he can have any pair and even a few draws that I’m beating.

Turn 2d. He checks, I bet 900 expecting him to fold anything worse than a pair of Jacks that doesn’t also have a draw.

River 6h. He checks, I bet 1400 expecting him to fold most of his one pair hands. He calls with J9, which is fine.

75/150, I have been very tight but choose to raise to 450 with Jc9c in MP. Jon calls on my left, bad player calls on the CO, spazzy guy calls on the Button, blinds fold.

Flop Js Td 8s. Checks around to button, who bets 600. I call, the others fold.

Turn 6c, we both check.  Read the complete post...

Michael Craig’s The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King takes readers on a behind-the-scenes tour of (at the time) the highest stakes poker game ever played. In search of a new challenge, banking prodigy Andy Beal challenges the best poker players in the world to play for stakes so high that millions of dollars change hands in a session and even these seasoned veterans can barely handle the swings.

As a poker player, I found PBSK fascinating for a number of reasons. For one thing, there were a lot of little details about Bobby’s Room (the high-stakes section of the Bellagio poker room, named for Bobby Baldwin) and the people who play there that I didn’t know. Craig writes for a broad audience, but even as someone who is relatively in-the-know about the poker world, I came away with a much better sense of the culture and traditions of that game. There were even a few regulars I hadn’t heard of, which I suppose is in itself a statement about the nature of the game.  Read the complete post...

Wicked Chops Poker is reporting that, with 2400 players left in the main event, Phil Ivey accepted a $20K wager from Andy Bloch at 99:1 that he would win the main event. Now that he’s made the final table, Bloch’s got to be sweating the $2 million loss.

My first reaction was that, this close call notwithstanding, this was a pretty good spot for Bloch. Granted everything I’ve heard about Ivey is that he’s both incredibly good at poker and insanely intimidating in person, but is he really 24 times more likely than the average player to take it down? The one thing I don’t know, which would make a big difference, is what his chip stack was like at the time. I guess if he was already at like three times the average when he took the bet, it might not be so unreasonable to think he’d close out eight times as often as anyone else sitting on a stack that big.  Read the complete post...

For some reason, people in Vegas talk to strangers on the elevator, which is a total 180 from common elevator behavior anywhere else in the world. I think it has something to do with the general mood of the place combined with how crowded the elevators often are.

Usually it’s just some lame joke about the crowds or something, but today, while I was waiting for the elevator at the luxurious Imperial Palace when a skinny man who looked to be in his early fifties walked over and pressed the button as well. “Mmm mmm mmm,” he groaned, shaking his head at me in frustration.

There are about a million reasons why someone might be feeling that way in Vegas, so I just pursed my lips and snorted sympathetically.

“This my last trip with that woman,” he told me. “We get home, I’m gettin’ a divorce.”  Read the complete post...

Legendary 2+2 poker author David Sklansky was recently the victim of a home invasion robbery committed by what appeared to be several armed individuals. According to the local NBC affiliate,

“‘The guy burst into the bedroom, it was dark but I did see what appeared to be a gun,’” home invasion victim David Sklansky recalls.

Sklansky was asleep in his bedroom when two men broke into his home near Wigwam and Bermuda shortly after 3 am Thursday morning.”

Thankfully, no one was hurt. Sklansky’s cool-headed (some might say robotic) personality surely helped in that regard:

“‘During the time he was there, my main focus was to make sure that he didn’t think that I was panicking or that I would do something silly,’” Sklansky explains. “‘The advice is the same as in a poker game; you try and figure out what the other guy is thinking and then act accordingly. I can imagine if he was doing this same robbery with someone who didn’t’ behave the way I did it could have turned out terribly.’”  Read the complete post...

I’ve recently received a few requests for old articles of mine that appeared in the 2+2 Magazine. First off, let me apologize that my archive is so out of date. The revamping of the website has proved far more complicated than anticipated, but it is nearly finished now. When it launches, it will contain an up-to-date archive of all my strategy articles and book reviews. Until then, you’re free to e-mail requests for specific articles to me at foucault82(at)yahoo(dot)com. As long as the volume doesn’t get overwhelming, I’m generally able to reply very quickly, though there may be some delay while I’m in Las Vegas the next few weeks. Thanks to everyone who’s interested in reading these, it’s very flattering!

I’m going to be publishing my trip report from my 35th place finish at the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event in three installments in the Two Plus Two Internet Magazine. The first installment, covering Days 1 and 2, has just been published in the August issue.

You can read trip reports from other events, including the 2006 and 2007 WSOP, in their entirety on my website.

Oh and for those of you who have been getting e-mails from me, there is some additional information in this version of the trip report, though not a lot.