Posts Tagged ‘WPT’

The indefatigable Tony Dunst has just been named as the host for a new segment on the World Poker Tour broadcasts called “Raw Deal” which will apparently feature “an edgy, yetinsightful look at hands from the week’s broadcast”.

Although he sounds like a caricature of a marketing hack when he says it, WPT Executive Producer Tony Grimm describes Tony’s qualifications for the job quite well: “There were a number of tremendously talented individuals who auditioned for the Raw Deal, but Tony stood out for his candor, his knowledge and his delivery. He’s going to have a big impact on the broadcast. He may ruffle some feathers, but he wasn’t brought in to be Mr. Nice Guy.”

According to the press release, Tony was also selected for his cosmopolitan background (he was born in Wisconsin and has lived in China, Australia, and Las Vegas) and his knowledge of the game.

To be honest, I haven’t seen a WPT broadcast in years, but this might get me watching. Even for televised poker it always seemed particularly light on meaningful poker content. Tony really is the ideal combination of charisma, personality, and poker talent for a gig like this. Huge congratulations and best of luck, buddy!

My fellow Poker Savvy Plus pro Christian “charder30″ Harder is at the TV table (final 6) of the World Poker Tour $25,000 Championship event at the Bellagio! According to the WPT, Christian comes in at a distant second with 7.5 million chips:

Seat 1 – Elky Grospellier – 5,955,000
Seat 2 – Scotty Nguyen – 3,275,000
Seat 3 – Shannon Shorr – 1,130,000
Seat 4 – Yevgeniy Timoshenko – 13,300,000
Seat 5 – Christian Harder – 7,425,000
Seat 6 – Ran Azor – 2,525,000

As you can see, there a few other well-known players at the table. Nonetheless, my money’s on Christian to win it all. Good luck buddy!

For those who didn’t see Calmer’s comment yesterday, I didn’t last long at all on Day 2 of the WPT. My table was fairly tough, not that it mattered. There were a few, young internet players who seemed pretty tough, one or two middle-aged guys who were probably the soft spots but weren’t particularly bad, a dealer in one of the local card rooms who played well enough, then Men “The Master” Nguyen and Erick Lindgren.

Blinds started off at 500/1000/100- can’t say enough about the great structure tournament director Matt Savage put together! My 17K chips gave me the perfect stack for shoving over raises. The first time I was in the BB, action folded to one of the internet guys in the SB. I felt like he was probably going to raise any two, because most of those guys just cannot bring themselves to open fold. He made it 2400, which unfortunately told me he was probably good, capable of choosing just the right bet size. But I had 44, moved all in, and got him to fold quickly. “I’m gonna pump your stack up 2400 chips at a time,” he told me, with a hint of disdain in his voice.

“Feel free,” I responded.  Read the complete post...

Edit: Important correction here. The non-bountied live pro I busted was not Bill Gazes but rather Bill Edler.

I decided to play the Bay 101 because of the combination of a nice location, great structure/tournament director (thanks Matt Savage!), and interesting people I thought it would attract, both because of the area and the number of pros who play as “shooting stars” with $5000 bounties on their heads.

At the outset, they distributed the bounties evenly, with one or two at every table in the 5 and/or 7 seats. I was fortunate to get probably the single softest bounty in the field at my table: 2007 WSOP main event champion Jerry Yang was seated to my immediate left. He was very quiet, but friendly enough. To my surprise, he made a lot of hopeless bluffs, especially in the early stages of the tournament. That’s not exactly how I expected him to play, which is maybe what he was going for. I called him down correctly once with 8s 4s on a Js 8h 3s Qd 3d board.  Read the complete post...

Day started with something like 136 players and 20,000 chips each. I spend most of the day in good shape, never amassing a huge stack but maintaining near or above the average. Then I made a big move on Joe Sebok on the very last hand of the night:

Daniel Alaei was on my immediate right, with Joe seated to his right. The two had been openly joking about how ridiculously tight a youngish Asian player across the table from us was. That player caught the big blind on the last hand of the night. Joe made a joke about going all in blind pre-flop to steal from him.

Blinds were 400/800/100, and Sebok open raised to 2200 with 30K behind. I thought that especially on the last hand of the night with a super tight player in the BB he could have almost anything here. Alaei called, and I was pretty sure that since he knew Sebok knew he knew the guy was tight, he didn’t have a huge hand and didn’t want to get into a pre-flop leveling war. He was just calling to use his position and knowledge of Joe’s wide range post-flop.  Read the complete post...

I’ve been alternately promising Emily a vacation and insisting that I haven’t had enough time for poker for months now. Finally, she offered the very appealing suggestion that we go to Northern California for the World Poker Tour event at the Bay 101 casino in San Jose. We’ve tacked on a few days to the end of the trip so that there’ll be vacationing no matter how the tournament goes, but having a few extra days in the Bay area isn’t a bad consolation prize if I don’t last long in the tournament.

We flew into Oakland Saturday night and had a minor adventure at the airport. Our hotel offered a free shuttle, but the Colgate Women’s Lacrosse team was already waiting for the shuttle when we got to the depot. It looked like the driver was going to need at least three trips to get all of them, and rather than waiting half an hour, we went to find a cab stand.

Along the way, a woman who seemed like a helpful airline employee (suspicious combination, I know, but in my defense I was tired) told us we could take a commercial shuttle for “about $5 each”. We waited a few minutes for the shuttle to arrive, and then a driver with a thick Indian accent started to pick up our bags and ask where we were going. He had clearly never heard of our hotel, which was practically walking distance from the airport, and started his price negotiation at $20.  Read the complete post...

This incident occurred a while ago, but I just came across this first-hand account from a hired chef who was not playing in the game posted on The Agitator:

The raid occurred around 7:40 p.m. I was in the kitchen area which was just inside the front door when suddenly there was loud banging from the door. Within seconds, the room was full of Dallas SWAT officers yelling for everyone to put their hands in the air. Behind the Dallas SWAT team came many more law enforcement officers and several camera crews for the A&E reality show, Dallas SWAT. The camera crew’s chests were clearly marked as “A&E Film Crew.”

Bear in mind that, prior to police entering, the place was virtually quiet. There was the sound of poker chips in the air, but not much else. The players were essentially professionals and working stiffs having fun…there were doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other professionals. There was hardly anything “dangerous” about the place at all. In fact, the cops found no weapons in the facility or on anyone there. The show of force and weaponry brought by the cops was simply outrageous and unjustified, given the circumstances, but, then again, are they enforcing the law or making a TV show?  Read the complete post...