I was determined that after a five-day hiatus between the previous two posts, I would get back to daily updates. As it’s now been two weeks, you can see how well that’s gone.

Like so many other dreams in Las Vegas, that one’s been broken. It’s bad, because it not only means that I’ve broken the chain of daily info, but that I have to leave out material in order to keep this post at a manageable length, if I remember  them at all, that is.

We’re now just over a week to the start of the Main Event, which is #68 on the calendar this year. The day I started this post, two events got under way: Events #41 and #42, the $1.5K NLHE Monster Stack and the $3K NLHE Shootout. I’m getting back to it as Event #53, the PLO/O8/Big O is a couple hours off. Determination, eh?

The day after my last post was the beginning of Event #26, the $1,500 Omaha 8 tournament. One of my concerns about taking this job was my ability to remember faces and attach them to names. Much better with remembering trivia, numbers, and dates than people I’ve met. It’s not an age thing, just one of those little quirks I’ve had to live with all my life. But apparently faces and names of poker players that I don’t talk to for the most part are more like trivia than the faces and names of poker players, dealers, or anyone else in daily life that I do talk to, so over the course of two HORSE tournaments I’d picked up a certain amount of familiarity with the people who play limit tournaments at the WSOP. Benny Glaser won the $1,500 a couple of days before winning the $10K version of the same game.

Benny Glaser and his mates just after he won his first bracelet of the year.

I played five Bovada tournaments on Sunday—Father’s Day—after the O8 tournament and min-cashed in just one—my only positive poker experience since the Survivor at the Venetian a couple of days after I got here. Played the Orleans HORSE tournament and only made it about three hours in.

Had the next day off, as well, and bricked three Bovada tournaments, then got halfway through the Orleans O8 tournament. Then the next day it was back to reporting, this time on Event #36, a $2.5K O8/Stud 8.

Three-and-a-half weeks’ worth of notes on WSOP events, more or less.

Let me just note: keeping track of actions and cards in limit split-pot games is not an easy task. For one thing, there are a lot more cards exposed in stud and Omaha games to start with. Sometimes it’s difficult for players to see what’s out there, and as live reporters, we’re supposed to be as unobtrusive as possible, so despite the occasional stink-eye from players who think we’re crowding them, we really are trying to give them room. And it’s just not all that clear sometimes where the chips are going, who got the high, who got a low, if there’s a quarter, etc. I do my best for someone with crappy handwriting.

Keeping track of moving players isn’t any easier.

With image enhancement, I’m almost visible in the Thunderdome, with Aditya Prasetyo next to the dealer, Fabrice Soulier in the white cap, and champion Hani Awad on the right.

The night Hani Awad won the bracelet he’s been heads up for in 2015, I headed over to the Orleans to play some poker myself since we wrapped up around 11:30pm instead of my usual 2:20am. All the O8 tables were full—it was the day of the first flight of the Monster Stack—but after about 5 minutes, I got a seat at a 1/3 NLHE game. Called a raise to $8 with [kx jx], with me, the original raiser, and the blinds into the pot, flop [kx jx tx], small blind bets $25, original raiser calls, and I put $80 in only to have the original raiser put me all in and suck out with [kx qx] on the turn. I wasn’t about to go to the cash machine for more,

Played 0.5/1 PLO8 on for a total of about 20 minutes and blew 100bb and went to the Golden Nugget to try out the PLO8/O8/Big O format that I’ll be covering starting today (assuming I get this post up on time). Had a couple of good hands, but busted out after about four-and-a-half hours.

I had been scheduled to report on the $10K Stud 8 tournament, but the Monster Stack grew to monstrous size. We had three people covering a Day 1B field of 4,507, which meant about 1,500 players—or 150 10-handed tables—apiece, and even with much simpler hands to write down, it was still a little bit of nightmare just trying to find and update people. I wrote an early post about Portland’s Steven Harper, who turned out to be the Day 2 chip leader. I’ve been kind of out of touch except with my particular events, but I did manage to plug the PDX players a little:

Only 276 left @WSOP #MonsterStack lots of #PDXpoker: #27 Moshe, #34 James, #36 Zhu #83 Harper #84 Grube #247 Dumdeang

— Poker Mutant (@pokermutant) June 27, 2016

I was also the first reporter (I think) to notice Arizona economics professor Mitchell Towner, the guy who won the thing. But I wasn’t there by then. I headed home to Portland for a couple of days. Now it’s back to work in half an hour. I promise not to take so long on the next one.

No waiting at registration at 2am.

I had another title and theme picked out for this post the other day, but it’s completely escaped me.

If this trip has done anything, it has given me even more respect for the abilities and stamina of Martin @hardboiledpoker Harris, and the work he’s done on his “Hard-Boiled Poker” blog. I also might hate him a little bit now, for making live reporting look like a task a mere mortal might be able to take on and still have a life.

I’ve been reading Martin’s work for several years, including his accounts of live reporting from stops in the US, Europe, and Latin America, as well as essays on politics and poker, plus articles on PokerNews. When I first considered branching out from this blog, Martin—by then an editor at PN—was the person I reached out to, and he’s been my editor there ever since. Oh, and he also teaches a course on poker and popular culture and has a farm with horses. After I’d applied for this job, and while I was waiting to hear back about whether I’d be hired, I read through Martin’s daily accounts of covering the 2008 WSOP, back when he was new to the game.

Since then, I’ve come to the conclusion that people like Martin are either just much better at this than I am, or that they have some sort of fucking time machine they’re not telling me about.

After the first HORSE tournament (and no, I don’t think changing the rotation order to HEROES is going to make it any easier for inattentive players to know which game they’re on, just look at the placards), I resolved to make sure I got a post in, no matter what the turnarounds were.

The first day of the $3K HORSE wasn’t anywhere near the car crash of the $1.5K. I was on with a different partner this time, another newbie to live reporting, but one who had some experience as a dealer at the WSOP, and we both had a couple of events under our belts, so we had a better feel for things.

The $3K was a smaller field, as well, though that meant even more concentration of big names to cover, and one issue we found ourselves with was a too-expansive list of stacks to track. Chino Rheem, Jason Somerville, Justin Bonomo (runner up in the $1.5K HORSE), Hellmuth, Ho, David Chiu, Robert Mizrachi just off his Stud bracelet, etc. No dinner break on Day 1 and we wrapped up around 2:30am. Monday. There was a lot of non-poker emotion around, as it was Sunday afternoon that Ryan Laplante talked about the Orlando shooting—which had happened early Sunday morning—at his bracelet ceremony.

I got to the house, finally got to sleep as light was starting to seep from behind the blackout curtains on my window, then woke up at 9:30am. Wrote up the report for the start of Day 2 and posted it, tried to catch up a little on the world outside and what was going on in the rest of the WSOP, but before I knew it, it was time to head back to the Rio for the 2pm start of HORSE.

The Millionaire Maker had been running over the weekend, and there were a number of Portland poker faces I ran across in the halls. Wayne Keller rolled up to me to say hi, and later on I ran across Darin Stout and Jim Rostel  (among others), who were there to rail Danny Elmore, who came in 18th out of nearly 7,200 entries. Elmore busted late on Day 3, but by now everyone knows that another Portland-are player, Lisa Meredith, went on to Day 4 to win half a million dollars after mostly playing $20 tournaments at Claudia’s, a mile from my house. Day 2 of the HORSE tournament wrapped up about 2am again, with two tables of eight players each coming back for Day 3.

Back up at 9:30 or so. Write the Day 3 intro (our guidelines say they’re supposed to be written the night before, but so far that hasn’t happened for me), then into the fray. We had two tables in an otherwise empty quarter of the Amazon Room to start with. The reporting desk was on the far side of the section, a “problem” Martin would sneer at. Then two minutes before the tournament was to start, the floorperson told players to put their chips back in their bags and ran them all the way across the room. My fellow reporter and I had to grab our computers and hurry to catch up, because we were fairly certain one of the players was going to bust on one of the first hands, since he came back for the day with just a single big bet.

Little did we know that there would be such a flurry of action as we had, with seven players busting in the course of ninety minutes, which meant a move to a secondary feature table, which was next to the “Thunderdome” where the final table of the Millionaire Maker was taking place. Fortunately, the placement of the media table was a little more protected than on the other secondary table (tertiary table?), which had been an issue on the $1.5K HORSE.

The chip leader through most of late Day 2 and up until almost dinner break on Day 3 was Jared Talarico, who I described in my Day 3 intro as having put on a “master class in relaxed aggression” (which was edited out) due to his being continually massaged for most of three days, blew up just before dinner break on the final table, losing a huge pot to Marco Johnson. In a series of about three hands, Talarico went from having more than half of the 6M chips in play to less than a 1M. There was no masseuse after the dinner break.

Johnson won the bracelet about midnight. I got home, watched the latest Game of Thrones, and slept until 10:30 (it was Wednesday, by now). I had planned to play the 11am 6-Max tournament at Planet Hollywood, but I was going to be late. Played it anyway and busted in Level 6, when I played [6x 6x] and the board ran out [qx jx 5x qx 6x], natch, my caller had the [qx jx] and the better full house before I even made mine. Thought about playing the afternoon Big O game, but went back to the house, helped chop stuff up for tostadas, ate too much, had a couple of drinks, and went to bed earlier than I normally do even when I’m not reporting late into the night.

Damn you, Martin Harris!

What happened to W-Days Plus 6 through 8, you might ask? Well, Event #8, the $1.5K HORSE tournament is what happened.

The first day of the event, I got to the Rio early and set up in the Amazon Room. The displays showed the tournament clock for the event. My colleague joined me and got his computer set up, but with fifteen minutes to go, nobody else at the table, no dealer, and no players, we were getting the feeling we were in the wrong place.

We eventually decamped to Brasilia, which was half full of eager HORSE players, but by then we were already behind the eight-ball, to use an analogy from a different game. As it turns out, the two of us were the coverage team, and the we got to work setting up the details of coverage for the tournament, spotting notable players, figuring out which sections we were covering, etc. HORSE uses up more tables because it’s played eight-handed. It isn’t like 6-Max, where you need half again as many tables as 9-handed, but still, 10% more. By a couple hours after starting time, the field had grown from over 500 to more than 700 (capping out at 778) and the two of us were feeling a bit overwhelmed.

That wasn’t helped by the fact that since HORSE whose player base is generally more experienced and established, the field was studded with big names who you really don’t want to make a mistake writing about. Of course, you necer want to make mistakes, but they do happen. The fear of getting the first name of a bracelet winner from the night before wrong, or writing down the wrong card for someone like Scotty Nguyen (who made the final table) or getting action wrong for a hand involving Greg Raymer (I’m not saying any of those things happened, just using them as examples)can be daunting. These are people who live poker, and however much as a player and reporter I sort of live poker, it wasn’t my job until last week, so I don’t have the same years of investment in what happens. If I put someone’s name into a post and get something wrong, they might bad, but my name’s not on the post. I might get in trouble or get fired, but nobody outside of the organization will have the slightest idea who I am.

Anyway, Day 1 didn’t feel like it went so well.

It also didn’t go well for Seattle-area player Ian Johns, who was down to 2K at the end of the day.

https://twitter.com/IanJ300/status/740431742117531650

We wrapped up sometime about 3 in the morning, I got to bed around 4, and was back at the Rio by 11 by 11am.

Day 2 started to go better, as we got a feel for the project. Also, only 202 players to cover. It went bettter for Johns as well, and when I checked on his seat, I wrote a post about him being up to nearly 20K. He continued to climb throughout the day, my partner and I got better (plus there were fewer players to cover), and we were down to 20 by the end of the day, barely getting the three-table seat draw up before having to scurry around to get chip counts and  table balancing seating changes.

Home at 4am again and back to the Rio by 11am. By Day three, I was starting to feel a bit sleep-deprived. I don’t normally sleep much anyway, but three-and-a-half or four hours a night for a week grinds even me down.

Day three started with three tables, with each one picking up exactly where they left off the day before. By four hours in, the field had been whittled down to a single table of eight, including Scotty Nguyen, and we were moved over to the secondary feature table, while a match in the last stages of the $10K NLHE Heads Up was going on the main stage.

The rail on the HORSE tournament was incredibly loud, which made writing updates—even getting into my seat at the table—kind of hard. The reporter’s table is right next to one of the entrances to the play area, so spectators tended to sort of blur the line of demarkation, with one two-fisted drinker resting a hand on the back of my chair every time I was out of my seat.

On the secondary feature table in the Amazon Room, with (counter-clockwise from the dealer) Chris Vitch, Andre Akkari, Noah Bronstein, Georgios Sotiropoulos, Ian Johns, and Svetlana Gromenkova (the last two with their backs to the camera). To the right out of the camera were seated Scotty Nguyen and Justin Bonomo.

The last day ran a little over twelve hours, and Ian Johns incredibly made it to the top. Aside from the big comeback on Day 2, there were a couple of times on Day 3 when he was knocked back and had to rebuild. By the end of the day, we were starting to get some attaboys from the bosses on our coverage of the event. Of course, neither of those matched the comeback of Ben Keeline, the busto player who went from driving Uber in Denver to winning $1,000,000 in the Colossus.

After that I slept. Woke up after the customary four hours, got something to drink, and laid back down to get some more sleep for the first time in days.

Friday was a day off, the first of two. I hung around the house for a while, helped my host and his web guy with a couple of issues, listened to a lot of talk about DFS and—I think—baseball that I didn’t understand, then finally headed about about 4pm to the airport to pick up a friend from the airport.

I thought I’d get into town with enough time to grab a late lunch at Krung Siam, but Friday afternoon traffic, amirite? Ended up just grabbing a cheeseburger from a McDonald’s near the airport, then driving around in circles a bunch of times while Brad got his luggage and out to the passenger pickup.

Dropped him off at the hotel, then we headed to the Venetian for another Survivor tournament. My table was next to Brad’s, but the noon game was going on with lots of tables in the main poker room, and our tables were in the aisleway next to the sports bet, where there was a lot of noise coming from the Golden State vs. Cleveland game, which made conversation a bit difficult.

I was in seat 8, and got talking with a woman on my right from the Bay Area named Carey who knew Angela Jordison. I was doing reasonably well for three hours, contesting a couple of times with an aggressive European player in seat 1, then things went bad about three hours in. I had [qx qx] on the button, there was a raise to 1,100 from seat 3 in early position, Carey called, and I eyed the stack of the player in seat 3, then put out 4,500. He went all in, with what I thought was a call and Carey folded. Seat 3 had [2x 2x] and flopped a set in the window. When the payout needed to be made, however, it turned out he had a 5,000-chip at the bottom of his stack, which was almost indistinguishable from the color of the table. No raise had been announced, I hadn’t actually said “call,” and I hadn’t put any chips forward to indicate a call. I would have called the extra 2,600 preflop, but I would have put out my full stack if the 5,000 had been visible.

I knew I was likely on the hook for the extra money, but I asked for a floor ruling. It took a while for the floorperson to get to the table and the Euro guy and a couple of others were telling me to just put the chips out. Maybe I should have, and eventually the floor ruled it was a call. Maybe I’m turning into a douchey angle-shooter.

Brad had busted out of the tournament before I did, but Daryl, who was in town on a weekend trip with his wife, made it to the 12th place extra money payout, which was decent since there were 7 players contributing to it.

Brad and I headed back to his hotel and met up with his brother for dinner at Ping Pang Pong. Dan Idema was there having dinner with three or four others at the next table before they moved to a bigger table one away and were replaced by a couple where the guy kept asking Brad and his brother about their food. I think he was hungry. I got some XO Shrimp Lai Fen, which said it was spicy, and the other guys said they thought it was spicy, but it wasn’t holding a candle to anything from Krung Siam.

Headed back home and slept some more for a long, long time.