<<How'd you fare in the tournament? Sure you're not Howard Lederer in disguise? <G> (or worse, Phil Helmuth)>>
Sad to say, I busted out on the first day. They split the field into two groups, half played on day 1 and half on day 2. I played on day 2, sat at a table including Barry Shulman (publisher of card player magazine), Juha Helpi (winner of the Ultimate Bet Aruba WPT event in 2003) and Jim McMannis (author of Positively Fourth Street, an excellent book documenting the Ted Binion murder trial and his amazing performance in the 2000 WSOP). I was sitting 2 seats to the left of Shulman, and he continually pilfered my blinds and sucked out on my good hands. I cracked him good once with a flopped straight with 6-7 suited in the big blind but lost every single other time I either had a big hand (QQ and KK come to mind) or hit the flop. Just wasn't meant to be, I guess. Shulman had a tremendous rush on the first day, was something like 5th in chip count, and proceeded to collapse on the next day (day 3), barely finishing in the money. The winner, Erik Lindgren, a Vegas pro, had just an amazing tournament from start to finish. Scotty Ngueyn played well, and survived about a dozen all-ins on day 4 to make it to the final table. On the night of the finals, when Scotty was short-stacked and contemplating a call, a friend yelled from the crowd "the sooner ya lose, the sooner you can booze!" eliciting massive laughter from the crowd. A bunch of pros were knocked out on day 1, a veritable Who's Who of the poker world, so I didn't feel too bad. James Woods, the renowned actor, also busted out on day 1 (he was sitting at the table right behind me). Helmuth was the 2nd player (out of 270) knocked out on the first day....and that after showing up late to the start! Great side game action throughout the tournament...on the last night I watched a cash no-limit game including Carlos Mortenson, Hellmuth, Mike Matusow, Chip Jett, Allen Cunningham, John Juanda, Andy Bloch and a couple of others....Cunningham took a nice pot off of Mortenson (around $40,000) with 99 vs 88. Some amazing stories from this game. |
