tilted behaviour

Waking up to a barrage of emails regarding our Visas for Brazil, both Brett and I decided to make an unexpected trip back to the Rio to the PokerNews office.

I had to fill out an online application twice since the first one decided not to work, before Brett and I were finally free so as to enjoy his last day in Las Vegas. Venturing over to the Miracle Mile shops, we walked round there for an hour or so, not really finding anything until the very last store; Urban Outfitters.

I found about a dozen t-shirts that I instantly fell in love with, along with a couple of cool jackets, but decided to hold off until later in my trip before I leave. Mickey wanted to join us for dinner, and since we had around $120 in Hard Rock comps, we decided to eat at Johnny Smalls. Johnny Smalls is a really nice restaurant located at the back of the casino that serves tapas-styled food at a semi-reasonable price. With the three of us being joined mid-meal by Brett’s friend Jess, we ordered over twenty dishes while – since we’re all degenerates – playing nine-card Omaha flips as the bill totalled a little more than we expected.

With nearly every media member that was still in town heading to the Gold Coast for some midnight dollar bowling, the four of us made our way there.

As the beers began to flow freely, the cards came out once again as we played an intense hand on nine-card Omaha where Mickey flopped middle set, Elissa top and bottom set, Brett a straight flush draw and I a gutshot and nut-flush draw along with an overpair. I dinged an Ace on the turn to take the lead and leave everyone drawing dead apart from Brett who held the one-outer draw . . . of course it was delivered on the river as I spat chips and made a hasty exit from the bar to hit the bowling lanes.

Brett and I both valued ourselves as decent bowlers and decided to play 25 cents a pin, 50 cents a spare and $1 a strike, while also spotting Mickey fifteen pins to make the game even. Unfortunately for Brett and I, we bowled like complete dogs, and although we still beat Mickey, the fifteen pins we spotted him hurt our pockets. The next game I managed to convince both Mickey and Brett to spot me the fifteen pins. Mickey bowled roughly the same score of around 125, Brett bowled something in the 150s, while I bowled worse then an epileptic salmon and struggled to even pass 100 as I shipped the moolah to both of them!

I opted out of the last game as I decided that I wanted to bowl left-handed. Originally I tried to get a line off Brett at bowling over 75 pins, but he wouldn’t give it to me. He must have sniffed something as I came out and bowled a whopping 147 left-handed while he still managed a strong 170 and Mickey a standard 124 as we called it a night and headed back to the Hard Rock.

Brett and I decided to play some late-night cash as a send off to his Vegas trip as we both found ourselves on separate $1-2 NLH tables.

Brett scooped a huge pot just as his table broke to see cash out a rack and change as he called it a night as his flight left in a few hours, while I tried to stick it out to try and make some money. Finding myself all in preflop with Kings against an online kid’s Ace-Queen seemed good until an Ace found its way on the flop and I made my way up to the room to try and get some sleep before checking out tomorrow for Donnie and GG’s place.

Waking up to catch the Netherlands vs Spain World Cup Final, I was partly sweating it because I laid a bet at the start of the World Cup for Spain to win.

With the game locked up at half time, I decided to head to the Strip so that I could get some of the pieces needed for the prank I was going to pull on my boss Matt at the freeroll later on in the day.

My plan was to get a t-shirt printed that read Matthew Parvis Direct To You In 20 Minutes 702-340-MATT – which turned out perfectly – while also getting a photoshopped photo of Matt printed off and stuck on some girls direct to you-esque cards (thanks to my buddy Carey who did the photoshopping for me).

On my return to the Hard Rock, I quickly raced upstairs to the room to shower and change before wondering down to the poker room to munch away on the nibbles that had been prepared for us. A total of thirty-two PokerNews employees were in attendance of the annual WSOP freeroll as I danced round for the first dozen or so hands attempting to get this prank sorted.

With plans of getting an extremely hot female to walk into the room, give Matt a huge kiss and then get him to sign the picture before she would take the t-shirt off and give it to him while also slipping him a room key, was difficult. For over ten minutes no one decent walked past until Kirsty managed to find someone willing to help us out.

The result . . . plenty of laughs, a red-faced Matt and pure satisfaction on my behalf!

Finally being able to return to the freeroll, there was cash prizes (minimum of $50) on offer, but the major prizes were the five iPad’s up for grabs. I managed to knock out Greg when in a limped pot against Mike I flopped bottom set of sevens against Greg’s top two and the board bricked out. I really started to get things going when we were down to the final two tables as I accumulated chips a lot easier through simple preflop raises since everyone was playing so tight for the iPad. Once we lost Sarah on the bubble, I had accumulated a top three chip stack as the final table was formed.

Seat 1: Ben Conoley (blogger)
Seat 2: Chad Holloway (blogger)
Seat 3: Matthew Parvis (da boss man)
Seat 4: Kristy Arnett (presenter)
Seat 5: Andrew Bogner (marketing director)
Seat 6: Adam ‘Snoopy’ Goulding (blogger and master of puns)
Seat 7: Tim Duckworth (blogger)
Seat 8: Elissa Harwood (blogger)
Seat 9: Alex Villegas (field reporter)
Seat 10: Adam Brown (cameraman)

The pros to this final table was the fact that Matt and Andrew were ineligible for the iPad which meant that we really needed to lose only three players, and since I didn’t want one, there was a good chance I could do a deal to get money instead.

We lost Adam and then Elissa to leave us with eight players as I began the negotiating. I managed to score $75 from the five eligible iPad players along with some of the leftover money which meant at least $375 plus between $100 or so on top. Once we all agreed, I went on a tear chipping up at ease before knocking out both Alex and Andrew in one hand. There is some background in this hand where Alex pushed me off a pot I was expecting to check down with him since we had Elissa all in. Chad then folded for his last chip in the small blind – while holding an Ace – because Andrew would be all in the next hand on the big blind and they were both involved in the last longer.

Consequently I attempted to double up Andrew by smooth-calling 4,000 only to have Alex move all in for 15,500. I told him that this was payback and called with the powerful 4♣ 2♥. Andrew tabled his 9-5 while Alex slowrolled us with his Kings. Justice prevailed as I dinged two fours on the flop to BOOM-SHAKA-LAKA his ass!

I then eliminated Parvis with Kings against Ace-King before dispatching of a short-stacked Snoopy as Ben and I went heads up with me holding a roughly 70,000 to 25,000 chip advantage with blinds at 2,000-4,000.

We probably played fifteen or so hands before he limped for 6,000 (after the blinds went up) and I checked my option with 4♣ 5♦. The flop fell down 4♠ 7♥ 8♣ and all the money went in with Ben well in the lead holding Queens. The turn blanked out, but the river landed the 4♥ to see me spike another set of trip fours; but this one being for the title of 2010 World Series of Poker PokerNews Freeroll Champion!

Congratulations to Tim Duckworth, Winner of Event 58: PokerNews Freeroll ($to be decided)!

Unfortunately the PokerNews team was unable to shell out for a diamond-encrusted gold bracelet, but the victory and some cash on the side eased the pain as we all ventured home and to our rooms upstairs to prepare for the PokerStars Player Party in just a few hours time!

Brett, Ben, Chad, Martin and I all split a cab to the Rio to look for some people as well as picking up Brett’s phone charger before we waltzed into the Palms just before the doors opened at 9pm.

While waiting in line, Ben and I decided to go on a Maccas run to grab some cheeseburgers as Brett called on us to bring him one to. Once we returned to the line, Martin, Chad and Brett were no where to be seen, and after a few phone calls, we discovered that they had decided to enter ahead of us!

Once inside, the beers flowed freely . . . but not for me . . . as I was sticking to water since I was starting to feel slightly better for the first time in a long time.

The newbies to the PokerNews team: Brett, Ben and Chad

Rich, Donnie, Remko, JonBon, Me and GG

Snoop Dogg’s support act Esthero came on at around 10pm or so, and she wasn’t that bad at keeping us entertained – even swigging a bottle of Jagermeister mid set to the cheers of everyone on the dance floor.

Since my plan was always to go home earlier then everyone else, I made my way back to the dance floor at around 11pm to wait patiently for Snoop Dogg with Ben and Brett. People slowly trickled onto the dance floor making it extremely squishy as I vowed to wait for Snoop just so that I could say I’d seen him perform from a few metres away – although I had no real interest in him or his music.

As the clock ticked past midnight, Brett was on about his sixteenth beer and decided that it was time to punch me in the face a couple of times. I didn’t even feel the urge to punch the kid back, since he was so wasted, and consequently just shrugged it off and continued to wait not so patiently for Snoop.

Finally at 12:30am Snoop came on and erupted the audience into cheers as the smell of weed that had been floating in the room for the past hour started to get stronger and stronger. Three songs into his set I pulled the pin and headed upstairs to say goodbye to the rest of the bunch before making my way back to the Hard Rock to get some rest.

Feeling slightly better (not sure how), I was ready to tackle Day 2a of the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event!

With such high numbers on the latter of the two day ones, the WSOP staff had deciding to merge both Day 1a and 1c together so that both day two fields would possess relatively the same numbers. Consequently it would be 2,412 players returning to battle out another eight hours of tournament poker.

Only 1,200 players would survive the day, but it would be an interesting situation that occurred with Matt Savage that would be the highlight of my day.

Savage Doubles and Receives Penalty
Matt Savage is one of – if not the – most well known Tournament Directors in the world having worked for many different companies; including the World Series of Poker.

“Well at least I doubled” Savage added before beginning his orbit hiatus from the table.

Today was also the day that PokerNews implemented the use of the iPad for updating player’s counts.

I managed to use it over the duration of the last level, and managed to update my whole section every ten minutes or so with relative ease. Where we will really see the benefit is most likely on days four an beyond, but so far everything about them have been on a positive note!

For most of the series I have been under the weather with what I’ve dubbed an ‘air-conditioning cold’, but over the last few days it has increasing getting worse.

Cough medicine, throat lozenges, mouth wash . . . I’ve tried about everything, but yet my health still slides downhill . . . but I’m a trooper, and work isn’t getting in the way of the World Series!

2,314 players took to the felt for Day 1c of the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event which was a considerable 618 player increase from last year. 1,645 players managed to survive with Johnny Chan sitting second in chips as I was let go early to try and recover from whatever the hell I had.

Day 1d of the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event was one that fell short of last years numbers by only managing to get 2,391 entrants in comparison to the 2,809 that registered for the 2009 sell out.

Starting the day in the blue section like normal, I was coughing up a storm mixed with blood and other disgusting things, and on several occasions left the Amazon Room and opened one of the doors leading to the outside car park to cough and unleash whatever was in my throat.

About a minute before play started, I quickly bolted from my chair, pushed through the Amazon Room doors and then swung one of the outside-leading doors open in readiness to hurl.

Unfortunately this was the exact time Phil Ivey had decided to enter the arena, and slowly walked up the stairs before detouring to the door I was still holding open.

“Thank you” he stated as I just nodded my head in acceptance before shutting the door and letting my many coughs and spits out.

It was purely Phil Ivey Watch 2010 for me and fellow Amazon Blue blogging partner Donnie Peters, but one of the best hands – well it wasn’t really a hand at all – didn’t involve Ivey.

Where Is My Seat?
Currently there is a player walking round the blue section of the Amazon room.

Unfortunately for the lost player – or as we discovered Stanley Quinn – he is a little confused at the difference between the one and six seats, as well as his proximity to Mr. Phil Ivey (since he is on the opposite end of the blue section to him).

1,713 players managed to bag and tag their chips, and still be in the running to take home part of the whooping $68,798,600 prizepool; well if you’re one of the lucky 747 anyway.

The goal however for the remaining 5,143 players heading into day two is the $8,944,138 first prize on offer!

Finally the biggest day of the poker calendar has arrived with the Day 1a of the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event!

1,125 players took to the felt which was a slight nine player increase from last year. There was no real stories that came out of the day apart from when the two chip leaders; Kevin McGowan and Tyler Smith, were seated together. Combining for over 313,000 in chips at the 150-300 blind level, both of these players could potentially play an amazing 1,045 big blind pot with each other!

Only 762 players managed to sneak through to a day 2a berth, but one that was unable to bag any chips at the completion of play was basketball star Shawn Marion.

Once an avid basketball follower, the past ten years or so have seen my interest in the game decline, but one aspect of the game that I’ll always keep close to my heart is the arcade game NBA Jam!

Although Shawn Marion was never featured in the original game, I personally tried to use every NBA Jam comment that I could – whether it really worked or not.

When Marion was rivered with a straight, I used the heading Marion Slam-a-Jamma’d, and when he doubled up I used, Marion’s Heating Up, and when he was unfortunately eliminated I used, Marion Puts Up A Brick!

Looking at the schedule at the start of the series, one event that I was blogging caught my eye.

The $5,000 Ante Up For Africa Celebrity-Charity Poker Tournament!

Covering the event with F-Train, we were all about the colour in this event since the play (mainly due to the structure) was never going to be amazing.

Headlining the celebrities included Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Montel Williams and Evander Holyfield while some of the pros in the field included Phil Ivey, Joe Hachem, Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson as 84 players turned out to participate in this charity tournament.

One of the players that reached the final table – Alex Filatov – was asked by Phil Gordon when play was three-handed how much he was going to donate since it is expected that the full prizepool is donated back to the Ante Up for Africa charity.

Filatov replied with just 10% to get an awkward reaction from both Gordon and Shannon Elizabeth as well as many members of the media. The MC for the latter part of the event; Ali Nejad, then spiked a subtle sucker punch towards Filatov by announcing who the previous winners were and how much (100% for the record) they donated.

Luckily however, Filatov exited next as Gordon bested Elizabeth heads up to claim the $130,641 first prize, which thankfully went all back to the Ante Up for Africa charity just before we ticked into hour five of the tournament.

Although we had a slight delay in leaving the Rio courtesy of a false start to the Tournament of Champions, me and Greg eventually found our way back to the Hard Rock before stopping into Mr. Lucky’s for some dinner.

We caught up with Chad before Greg convinced us to head to Terrible’s Casino across the road so that we could degen it up.

Hitting the Blackjack table first, the dealer forced me into a Phil Hellmuth-esque explosion when she thought my waving of a hand for a stand was a hit, and busted me. The dealer rolled a 20 anyway, so hitting didn’t change anything, but that wasn’t the point as I was now officially tilted.

I quickly lost my last $50 – for the record I lost all ten hands I played – before heading over to the Craps table and plonking $200 down on the table.

I had never seen it before, but there was this fire bet where if you could hit five points in a row you would receive 150-1 on your bet, and six in a row meant 300-1. Either way it made the game so much more exciting as we sat on four (30-1) for ages as we just kept missing the point by a dimple here and there.

Randomly upping my bets, both Chad and another shooter started hitting some points and my numbers as I finally managed to hit some Craps run good and eventually turned my initial $200 into $850 as Chad also made a little money on the same table while Greg was playing bingo somewhere before we ventured home for the night.

After covering day three of Event 13: $1,000 No Limit Holdem yesterday I managed to somehow sneak another day off into my schedule.

With GG out of down and Donnie at work, I wasn’t able to head to their house to do my washing so consequently ventured across the road to the laundromat around lunchtime and put through two loads of washing. It only cost me $1.50 for each machine and $1.25 to use the dryers for just under half an hour, which – although I’ve never paid to do washing – seemed fairly cheap.

Jane swung by in the late afternoon and we headed to Fashion Show Mall to both get a haircut before going on an adventure to find her some sparkly silver shoes to match her blue dress. Let me tell you . . . shopping with Jane is a long and tiring adventure (punishment?) that took nearly three hours until we hit that pot of gold and found those shoes!

Since she was heading to some club opening (the reason behind the shoes of course), I got dropped off back at the Hard Rock to join the PokerNews Cash Game for some degenerate limit holdem action!

Kristy, Parvis and a bunch of the Deuces Cracked guys were there along with a few randoms as we decided to reduce the game to just $2-4 Limit Holdem. Kristy and the Deuces Cracked guys had to leave early, but Chad and Ben soon joined us along with some noobs to juice the action up further.

Sitting with $400, we all began juicing the game up as I announced that I would cap it wherever possible if Parvis – ie my boss – raised or bet. The chips flew back and forth between everyone, but cracking his set of Aces with a gutshot straight made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside while he slumped back with a what the fuck do I have to do to catch a break look on his face as he was down something ridiculous like $300.

Parvis left around midnight while we decided to switch the game to Dealers Choice spreading Stud, Stud Hi/Lo, Razz, Pot Limit Omaha and 2-7 Draw Lowball.

I inherited Parvis’ run bad and saw my $400 stack slide all the way down to just $160, but at least I managed to enjoy a $100 massage with one of the Rio massage girls named Stef – which coincidently is one of the ones I think is the cutest over the past few years.

We ended the night around 3am and made our way to Mr. Lucky’s 24-7 to have a late-night snack before Ben and I dragged Chad along to the Craps table.

I went on a pretty good roll to be up around $80 and once I hit the point I upped all my bets . . . of course I instantly set another point and then crapped out before running out a $200 loss for the night on top of my poker loses and massage expenses!

After waking up early this morning I headed into town for a walk to grab a drink and have a look at some of the souvenir stores before making my way to the casino for Day 2 action.

Day 2 coverage (PokerNetwork browser) / Day 2 coverage (PokerNews browser)

Needing to only reach the final table to end the day it was always expected to be a quick one. With so many good players still in the field it was unfortunate to see Simon Watt, Yann Pauchon, Aaron Benton, Constantine Harach, Eric Assadourian, Dennis Huntly and Michael Pedley all fall short of making the final table both entertaining and highly skilled.

Seat 1: James Honeybone (57,100)
Seat 2: Richard Lancaster (107,000)
Seat 3: Alfred Saliba (129,800)
Seat 4: Soren Eriksen (129,400)
Seat 5: Mike King (33,600)
Seat 6: Michael Spilkin (210,400)
Seat 7: Joseph Allis (213,100)
Seat 8: Cole Swannack (161,600)
Seat 9: Andrew Middleditch (48,300)

As I was packing up, a few of the boys invited me out to dinner at the Japanese restaurant across the road – where funnily enough I had ordered take-away the previous two nights – and I gladly accepted.

Basically the dinner was in honour of Michael Spilkin who everyone thought was a lock to take the Main Event out. Eric Assadourian, Tony Hachem, Aaron Benton, Michael Pedley, David Borg and Shane Ogier were in attendance when I got there as we all ordered a couple of drinks.

That’s when the problems started.

Since everyone there is a poker player, they like things done their way and quickly. Unfortunately the lovely lady that was running the ship got a few of the orders wrong and consequently a few of the boys got upset.

Apart from that little dilemma the food was still fantastic, the company even better and the stories the icing on the cake. As the NZ$500 bill arrived I reached for my wallet so as to opt out for the credit card roulette the boys were going to do, but both David and Peds offered to cover me and Peds ended up putting up an additional credit card to cover me.

We chucked them all in my hat as I started to slowly pull one-by-one out. In the end it was down to Peds – well actually my card – and Michael, but when Michael’s card was the last one out the final tablist covered the bill much to the relief of Peds.

The boys were heading to a bar or a strip club, but I had some work to do and parted ways at the hotel.

I wrote my article and had a quick shower before decided that my crap run of cards couldn’t continue as I decided to try my luck on the felt again.

Once I finally got a seat there were two people that had over $1,500 on the table while the rest were a combination of drunk fish, tight old timers or complete noobs.

Wanting to take on the two big stacks I decided that the way I had been playing – which aligned to my online strategy – was doing no good here and consequently I decided to gamble it up. It was no more evident when after raising to $12 on the button (for value el oh el) with 6♣ 5♣ after five limpers, there was an all in from the small blind for $50, a raise to $150 from one of the limpers and an all in from another limper, I decided to ship my $150 into the middle.

The board ran out A♠ 3♣ 8♣ 9♥ 2♠ to see me brick out my monster draw. The small blind had Kings, the limp-re raiser had Kings too and the other limper had sevens. It didn’t bother me too much as I shelled out another $150, but would soon see that go too.

I chipped up to over $230 before opening to $12 with 10♣ 10♠ and found five callers to see a 3♠ 6♣ 7♣ flop and my bet of $45 only called by one of the big stacks who had been calling three streets with middle-pair and worse. The turn landed the K♠ and I checked only to be faced with a $100 bet. As stated previously, this guy had been pretty bad and consequently I decided to commit my last $175. He took his time before calling – now feeling that I was good – to see the 2♦ land on the river. I tabled my tens, but he slowrolled is 4♦ 5♦ for a flopped straight as I quickly vacated my seat.

Stuck in the hole quite a bit from this trip I decided that I would turn to my old favourite/nemesis/destructor of bankrolls in Baccarat.

I changed over the last of my money to see me sit down at the $25 squeeze table with $675 needing to turn that into over $1,400 to get even for the trip (including expenses etc).

There isn’t much to say about my Baccarat experience apart from the fact that I was lame enough to keep a scorecard. Maybe it was due to this, or the fact that I just flipped well to see me turn that $675 into $1,250 by betting in $25 and $50 units with just the occasional $75.

My Christchurch Casino profitable Baccarat experience

With my wallet more padded, and some relief that I was only down a marginal amount I called it a night vowing not to hit the poker tables again while in New Zealand!