In today’s Fox Report, we have even bigger news than a cake vending machine. I’ve been suspended from twitter. No, I have no idea why. I’ve been behaving myself on the platform, and their email said it was for spamming, which I definitely have never done. Annoying.
How am I supposed to keep up with the never ending drama of poker twitter? What am I to do now? Spend more time with my wife and sit in my pool and go hiking in the beautiful mountains around Las Vegas? Hmmm. Yeah, that’s a good point. If they overturn the decision on appeal I’m going to waste a lot less time on twitter in the future.
I’ve played two events so far. I had a lot of business tuff to catch up with and only had time to play the razz and the nine-game. Neither went well. Grrr. But now that I’m not serious about playing poker for a living, the bad tournament days really don’t bother me so much. And I’m really looking forward to my next event, the $10k Secret Bounty tomorrow.
The big question is what the field in this event will look like. Will there be hundreds of rich fish who just want to take a shot at hitting that million dollar bounty? Or will it be the 150 best no-limit players on the planet trying to figure out how to adjust their strategies to play solver-correct with bounties in play?
Each year I loathe the same old things I know I’ll hear hundreds of times at the series. This year I decided to keep track. While I haven’t been at the Horseshoe as much as I usually might, I have spent some days taking pictures and playing cash, as well as my two short (and very efficient) tournament entries, which has given me a good sample size.
The favorite for Most Common Gripe going in was “If I just win that one hand”. A win would have made this the most annoying phrase six years running. No dude, there were 120 people left, you would have had an average stack, and you have no idea what you’re doing. That one hand would not have made a difference.
But the results have been surprising. Here are the stats so far.
37 instances of “If I just win that one hand”
42 instances of “They just don’t fold”
17 instances of “I can’t play better than that”
22 instances of “Right on the turn, no waiting”
11 instances of “I’m way better than him and he wins everything”
And 92 bad beat stories.
I’m honestly shocked that “They just don’t fold” has had such a strong performance. I assume it’s the wider adoption of solver-based play which tends to be looser and more aggressive. I’ve also heard at least four stories about how much Phil Hellmuth sucks (he doesn’t) and received three lectures on how I shouldn’t have been vaccinated.
Crowds have been pretty good, but traffic has slowed down and getting into and out of the Horseshoe hasn’t been bad. Just avoid driving down the strip and you’ll be fine.
No word on the cake yet. I want to wait to try it with a friend who is a culinary director and maybe a few other foodies so we can really give it a proper review. The only food I’ve purchased at the series so far is a pack of protein cookies from Quest (solid 4 of 5 stars, not bad at all for low sugar cookies) and a bag of honey roasted peanuts (3 of 5 stars, decidedly lacking in the honey roasted goodness I have come to expect from Planter).
Cash games have been great. I’ve made some money, but more important, the usual grumping and complaining from mixed game players has been almost non-existent. Dealers have been friendly and reasonably skilled for the WSOP, and have been perfectly happy to learn and move slowly until they know how to deal a new game. I’m not mad at a dealer who has never dealt Drawmaha Hi-Dugi, because there are very few in the world that ever have.
And now, your WSOP Pic Dump for this week.
