LAPC Main Event: Ice, Ice Baby

Teddy "the Iceman" Monroe is still alive at the 2009 L.A. Poker Classic Main Event, and he spent most of the afternoon yesterday letting everyone in the room know it. After one double-up, he rambled, "I'm not goin' home. I ain't goin nowhere. I'm letting you know. I'm the number one live player in the world. I knew he was gonna call. Try to bust the Iceman, but he got froze. I'm like a... I'm on a boat, lookin' for sharks."

Later on he proclaimed himself "the number one short-stack player in the world". That begs the question of how often you have to play a short stack in order to garner that distinction.

Monroe made for good copy though. He accepted three dollar bills from Nancy Todd Tyner so that he could tip a porter, giving the porter $2 and stuffing the other dollar in his own pocket -- the same pocket that contained a condom, which Monroe later threw at a player contemplating calling Monroe's all-in bet. Monroe told the other player if he called, he'd be fucked. You stay classy, Iceman!

***

In other news, since when did Hoyazo and Waffles start doing poker videos?


[RSS readers, click through!]

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LAPC Main Event: Burst My Bubble

Yesterday was Day 3 of the 2009 L.A. Poker Classic Main Event. At the start of play I anticipated that we would finish Day 3 just short of the money bubble. It turned out that we were on the bubble at the scheduled end of play; TD Matt Savage naturally decided that we should play through the bubble so that nobody would have to come back on Day 4 just to play a few hands and go home empty-handed. After an extra twenty minutes, two players were all in before the deal on the same hand. One of them busted, and that was that.

I hung out with two female friends after the bubble burst. The original plan was to meet in Santa Monica for dinner, but they called an audible about an hour before I met them and directed me to a place on the Sunset Strip. I hate the Sunset Strip. When I lived here, I learned to avoid it for three reasons: (1) it takes itself too seriously (although that tends to be true of most places in L.A.) and attracts the kind of crowd that goes for that sort of thing; (2) it is overcrowded; and (3) parking is the choice between spending $20 to valet or spending half an hour hunting for an unoccupied meter that's within a mile of your destination. Being the cheapie that I am, I of course chose the latter option. $20 for parking? Eff you, Los Angeles.

One of my friends was staying at the Standard and wanted to check out the hotel lounge, Purple Lounge. The lounge tried waaaay too hard to "be something", allowing it to fit in perfectly on Sunset. We stayed long enough for a few beers and made a graceful but hasty exit when two self-important white 23-year olds from the Valley started trying out some of their lines on my 34-year old Indian and 28-year old Egyptian companions. (I've stopped running with white women, I guess; also, when did guys in West Hollywood stop hitting on me?) Their conversation was so cringe-inducing that I felt bad for them and ignored them entirely.

I hope I was never that 23-year old, but I have a feeling that we were all that guy at some point. Anyway, bring on Day 4...

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LAPC Main Event: A Day Late and $17,000 Short

There were several stories in play yesterday at the L.A. Poker Classic Main Event, but the one that captured my imagination the most was that of Brett Shaffer. Shaffer's was another underdog story along the lines of the David Docherty tale from the 2009 Aussie Millions Main Event but with a novel twist.

Players started the LAPC Main Event with 20,000 in chips. Shaffer's stack barely survived Day 1. And when I say "Shaffer's stack", I mean just that. Shaffer never turned up for Day 1, mistakenly thinking that the tournament started on what was actually Day 2. By the time he took his seat at about 2pm, his stack had been blinded off to 2,500, with blinds of 250 and 500. That's a late entrance that even Phil Hellmuth could be proud of. I'm guessing that topic of conversation came up at the table, since Shaffer drew Hellmuth, David Chiu and Hevad Khan as tablemates.

Whoever fed Shaffer that bad information was surely read the riot act by Shaffer after he clawed his way to the first break. A few quick double-ups got Shaffer level with Hellmuth at 12,000 chips, prompting the Poker Brat to quip, "This guy has missed eight levels, and he's still got as many chips as I do." Shaffer made it to a high-water mark of 55,000, but was eliminated at the very end of Day 2 (long after Hellmuth left the room), all in preflop with A-K against A-Q. Three queens on the flop put a dagger through Shaffer's tournament heart.

One of the primary reasons we were even able to relate that story was that TD Matt Savage went to bat for us regarding the WPT media restrictions that had been in place for Day 1. It looks like he won; we roamed the floor freely and unmolested for the majority of Day 2, for which I was definitely grateful.

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LAPC Main Event: Day 1 Errata

* The media badge I'm wearing says "ESCORTED ACCESS" at the bottom of it. As I was standing over Andy Bloch's table watching a hand, he glanced at the badge.

"Where's your escort?" Andy asked with a grin.

"That's a damn fine question," I responded. "I need to get on that pronto."

"I'd check how cute she is first," Andy suggested.

* At the end of the day I was passing by Daniel Negreanu's table. I overheard a snippet of conversation between Negreanu and a railbird that caused my head to turn:

Railbird: I bet you've never done a teabag before.
Negreanu: It's true, that was my first teabag.

Naturally it wasn't what it sounded like; the railbird asked Negreanu for an autograph and the only thing he had to sign was a teabag from the coffee setup in the back corner of the room.

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LAPC Main Event: Why Are We Here?

Day 1 of the LAPC Main Event was one of the most dispiriting days I've had in the poker industry. It started off when we were informed during Level 1 that, because of WPT contractual obligations, we'd only be allowed to send two people on the floor for fifteen minutes per level. This flew in the face of what we'd been told by Commerce before making the trek from Vegas to LA and made it virtually impossible to cover the tournament in the typical PokerNews style. It also made redundant the small team of four people that had been put together for the tournament.

I personally did the best I could to drum up anything to write about, but it's hard to do even the more-feature-oriented pieces without reasonable access to the floor. I could probably write a book on the short-sightedness of media exclusivity but I think for now I'll keep those thoughts to myself. Suffice it to say that I was singularly unimpressed by everything I witnessed yesterday. That shouldn't be interpreted as a slight on TD Matt Savage; I think that part of the problem was that we got caught up in a turf war of sorts between Commerce and the WPT.

It's going to be a long week.

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Moving Day

Tomorrow is moving day. And by "moving day", I mean "moving myself 275 miles to the southwest to invade the drool-worthy mid-limit hold'em cash games of Commerce Casino". If you want to play limit hold'em in this day and age for any stakes bigger than beer money, you go primarily to one of two places: Atlantic City or Los Angeles. Sure you can find games in other places but the game selection in AC and LA is non-pareil.

I leave Sin City after breakfast. I should descend to the City of Angels well before dinner, giving me plenty of time to try to relieve players of their bankrolls on Friday evening. The Main Event of the LAPC starts Saturday. It'll be nose to the grindstone from that point through Thursday.

See you there?

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Open Letter to All Bot Developers

Dear Poker-Bot Developers,

In some ways I can empathize with what you're trying to do. The get-rich-quick scheme has been at the heart of the American psyche since long before Charles Ponzi showed up on the shores of this great country at the start of the 20th century with barely a pot to piss in. Poker, given its potential for big scores at minimal investment, is just the latest iteration of that hallowed American Dream.

A recent audit of my incoming traffic suggests that, as part of the development of your poker bot (which will no doubt earn you untold riches while you sleep!), you're considering cribbing from my SNG strategy that I used to beat the PartyPoker SNGs in 2004. Some things to keep in mind: (1) I'm a donk; (2) The strategy wasn't that great a strategy at the time and certainly isn't at all useful for the vastly changed online poker landscape of 2009; and (3) I'm a donk.

I think what I'm saying is, "Have at it and godspeed."

Yours in Christ,
--F-Train

P.S. Eff the haters man. You guys are doing the online poker industry a great service in its efforts to bring online poker into the accepted mainstream and out from under the UIGEA. They should build a shrine to you and Russ Hamilton.

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Musings on (Poker) Current Events: SCOOP, Bellande, and LAPC

I have to go pick up my car in the morning and should probably be asleep. Instead lets see what's in the hopper.

1. SCOOP Announced - Poker Stars is supplementing its annual World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) held each September with a spring version. Appropriately enough it's being called the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) and will be held from April 1 - April 12. In and of itself, that's not really the biggest news. The SCOOP was informally announced back in December. I believe one of the prizes from the blogger freeroll series was an entry into the SCOOP Main Event.

What makes SCOOP unique and noteworthy for the purposes of this post is that each event will consist of three separate sub-events, each with its own buy-in and guaranteed prize pool: a low stakes buy-in ranging from $5.50 to $109 depending on the event; a medium stakes buy-in ranging from $55 to $1,050; and a high stakes buy-in ranging from $530 to $10,300. This opens up participation in SCOOP events to all bankroll levels and is an idea long overdue. Kudos to Stars for a brilliant scheme.

The full schedule is available in a number of places (for example, here). Mark your calendars appropriately.

2. 5-card Omaha - This one gets filed under B for "Bizarre", cross-indexed under B for "how Bad do you have to Be?" and sub-indexed under B for "Bellande". Roy Winston posted a piece on CardPlayer about cash game action at Commerce during the LA Poker Classic. There was a throw-away paragraph at the very end, to wit:

There was one other interesting game going on between Jean Robert Bellande and Jeff, who is a young really good online and live player. They were playing a high stakes pot limit Omaha heads up game, and Bellande was being spotted 5 starting cards instead of the usual 4. That's right I said Jeff was spotting Bellande, not the other way around. When I left they were several hours into it and Jeff was absolutely slaughtering Jean Robert.

What Winston meant is that "Jeff" was spotting Bellande one extra card every deal, giving Bellande five to work with while Jeff was dealt only the normal four. 2+2 picked the story up and ran with it. Several posters theorized about what a ridiculous edge being given an extra card must be, while everyone else chimed in with the typical 2+2 "LOLOMGAYFKM? Bellande is teh suck" type of response.

Understand that the edge really is HUGE. Omaha is played with four cards. A winning hand must use two of those cards and three board cards. The effect is that each four-card hand can make up to six different two-card combinations. By giving Bellande a fifth card, his opponent was allowing Bellande to make ten different two-card combinations. That's an edge that is so ridiculous that one of two things was true. Either (a) it never happened and Winston was mistaken or (b) Bellande was playing and running HORRIFICALLY bad.

Lo and behold, Bellande posted an "answer thread" on 2+2 today in which he admitted that yes, the story was true and yes, he was stuck in the game, and boo-hoo all you haters love to see my misfortune! Then a few sentences later he promoted some new reality show he is to be the subject of and for which a pilot will be shot in March. The show is tentatively called (no joke) "Broke and Living like a Millionaire".

The irony is blinding.

3. L.A. Poker Classic - Some good news on the home front. I'm off to Los Angeles on Friday to cover the Main Event of the L.A. Poker Classic for PokerNews. This is a $10,000 WPT event which should be full of big name pros and (hopefully) interesting side stories. I'm arriving in L.A. Friday evening and will be staying for three extra days past the scheduled end of the Main Event on Thursday, February 26th. Feel free to pop by Commerce if you're so inclined; if not perhaps something else can be arranged the following weekend.

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The Death of Cranky Man

Frustrating poker weekend. Friday night I played the juiciest $10-$20 game I've seen in Vegas in a long time and walked away with only $70 in profit after four hours. The rest of the poker time was spent playing on Poker Stars.

Stars has been running their "25 Billionth Hand" promotion for the last few days. I recently acquired a $100 bankroll on Stars, courtesy of a Chinese Poker win on the 7-hour flight from Sydney to Manila last month. Apparently I hate myself -- I exercised proper bankroll management and started trying to build my meager bankroll into something more substantial by playing $0.25-$0.50 limit hold'em.

I know, I know. It's hardly worth my time. If I'm going to play on Stars I should just deposit a proper amount of money and play reasonable stakes. Yet I find something appealing about the challenge of taking that $100 and turning it into a more substantial amount without depositing. I also figured the donks would be out in force trying to catch lightning in a bottle with one of the "milestone" hands. (For the record, the closest any of my tables got to a milestone hand was within 140 hands, which by my estimation was a quarter of a second too slow).

I ran like a god for a while, then lost half of my profits to a wild table tonight where I just couldn't make anything work. Frustrating. On the bright side, it's very easy for me to see how beatable the games are. They are a ton easier than the $1-$2 games I've been beating with my slightly less meager Full Tilt bankroll.

One of the other things that's become very clear to me over the 2,400 combined hands I've scratched together in the last eight weeks (four weeks off while I was traveling) is that losing focus or discipline for even a moment can be very costly. Thankfully I'm becoming a bit more de-sensitized to some of the beats, which is helping me maintain proper focus. When I first started playing on Full Tilt again eight weeks ago, CK would hear me in my office muttering at the laptop screen and would call me 'Cranky Man'. Cranky Man hasn't made as much of an appearance recently, even with the ace-chasers hitting against me repeatedly tonight.

--

Thanks to everyone who gave me their thoughts on the car situation. I've spent a fair amount of time mulling it over and am hoping to wrap things up this week.

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My Current Dilemma

Moving out to Las Vegas nine months ago has finally put me in the market for a used car. (Amazing that it's taken this long, really.) I don't know if you've noticed, but it's a great time to be in the market for a used car. The auto industry has been flushed down a shittier hole than that giant stinking pile of liquid crap the Slumdog Millionaire kid jumped into. With the world economy in freefall, people have stopped shelling out thousands of dollars for something newer and shinier than the old beater that's been serving them faithfully for the last seven years. That has made auto dealerships more amenable to moving cars off the lot for less money than they would otherwise prefer.

Of course it's not as easy as just walking onto a lot, naming your price, and driving away in a solid specimen of automobile. If it was, I would have bought a spiffy little number tonight for about half of the sticker price. Cars still have an intrinsic value. Getting a dealership to part with one for little more than a smile and a song is less likely than becoming poker's next "it" boy. That leads us to my dilemma.

I have an excellent idea of the make and model I desire. Where I'm stuck is the crossroads between (1) buying a somewhat newer, lower-mileage car for a few thousand more, and (2) buying a somewhat older, higher-mileage car for a few thousand less. The practical side of me would point out that I won't be commuting to a job in this automobile. The half of the time that I'm home, the commute is the distance between my upstairs bedroom and the downstairs bedroom-behind-the-garage-turned-office. The car would be used for tooling around town, running errands, getting down to the Strip to play poker or see friends, and the like. That points to the older car.

The less practical side of me would say that if I'm going to make a major purchase, I should make sure I'm happy with what I get. Splurging a little won't break the bank. And something newer with less mileage will be less likely to have significant mechanical problems any time soon. That points to the newer car.

It helps that I have no set timeframe within which I MUST buy this car, but it will become significantly more of a pain for me starting next Friday.

Armed with all this information, what say you, rabble-rousers of Comment Land? Do I take Avenue (1) or Avenue (2)?

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Fan Mail!

"If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference."
--Abraham Lincoln

Back in my rookie days at the Amazon Room during the 2008 World Series of Poker, I managed to piss off a few poker players. Grumpy lot that they are, this is hardly surprising. At the time Pauly told me that a tournament reporter hasn't really earned his chops until he's pissed someone off.

After the WSOP ended things were relatively quiet throughout the APPT and LAPT stops. But at the 2009 Aussie Millions I (apparently) struck again. The who and what of it is largely irrelevant. The key fact is that the aggrieved party never complained to me or anyone from PokerNews directly. This player waited until after the Aussie Millions was over and the tournament in question had been concluded for a week and a half before sending out a blast to a mailing list the person writes to/for. A copy of the diatribe -- complete with gross distortions and outright errors -- was forwarded to me while I was in Manila.

Even before Pauly told me not to sweat POed players, I wasn't the type to let player hostilities bother me. Water off a duck's ass and all that. My experiences at the WSOP taught me that the vast majority of poker players are miserable, crabby bitches who will whine your ear off about the slightest of slights. One player being pissed off about something I wrote or said at the Aussie Millions is not something to worry too much about as long as I didn't completely screw it up. Which I didn't - I double-checked after reading the screed to see if the player had a case. And even if I *did* screw something up... well, mistakes happen despite the best of intentions. (And the truth is I got more email praise for my coverage of the Aussie Millions than any tournament series I've ever covered.)

What I find perplexing is why this player never spoke directly to me or anyone from PokerNews about the perceived offense. It's not like it was difficult to figure out where we'd be every day. The PokerNews staff were at the same media table at one end of the Crown Poker Room for the whole two weeks of the Aussie Millions. Speaking to one of us directly might actually have accomplished something on this player's behalf; sending out an angry rant that was filled with errors, put words in my mouth, and went to pains to identify me without actually naming me accomplishes nothing.

They say that in channeling, a spirit entity invades the channeler and uses that person to communicate. And believe you me there's lots of that going on in the tournament reporting industry. Tournament reporters are in some ways just elaborate mouthpieces for online poker sites. When a cash game player in Macau asked me if it was true that the live-bloggers went around with a crew of fluffers, I responded, "Are you kidding? We *are* the fluffer crew."

But the individual tournament reporters do retain some discretion regarding which stories and which hands they choose to report. So I suppose what this player's email rant has accomplished is to ensure that I will never take this player seriously and that I will not go out of my way to provide him/her with any press in the future. Some players play just for the thrill of it but many of the established players on the tournament circuit want the press also. It feeds their egos and helps bolster a case for sponsorship if they can string together some results.

You can't please all of the people all of the time, Abe Lincoln is purported to have once said. In the tournament reporting business I'd wager you can't even please all of the people some of the time.

But that's not my job.

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One Night in Manila

The last evening that I was in Manila, I found myself casting about for something to do much earlier than anticipated. The final table of the Asian Poker Tour Philippines Main Event was finished in a speedy 2:45, so quick that the tour organizers were concerned that they didn't have enough footage for television. Not my concern of course. My concern was finding a place for a beer as soon as possible. It was the last night of a long four weeks away from home. A beer at an outdoor bar on a balmy Filipino night seemed like the perfect salve for a tired soul.

By 4:30pm all of my gear was safely stowed in my hotel room. Down in the lobby I ran into three members of the APT staff that I had befriended the night before at the APT players party. The APT is based in the Philippines, undoubtedly because of two factors: (1) the tour principals live in Manila, and (2) labor, like everything else in the Philippines, is dirt cheap. As a Westerner there are times when you almost feel like you have a target on your back once you set foot on the streets because the people there are so poor and you are (relatively speaking) so rich. And this time around we were in Makati -- the "good" section of Manila.

The three APT staff comprised a woman named Katrina and two gay men, Patrick and Quevyn. Each spoke excellent English, as most Filipinos do. They were young and fun and also at the tail end of a long week. After stopping off for a quick meal, I persuaded them to join me for beer by offering to pay for everything. This would have been my friend-making tactic if I had rocked up to a bar alone and seemed a perfectly reasonable use of money for people that I knew and liked. It also would cost me far less than it would have cost them if I hadn't offered.

As the night wore on and the $6 buckets of San Mig Light increased, talk turned to Filipino / Tagalog. Patrick and Quevyn were determined to learn the Westerner a few phrases to take back home. They were also determined to hook me up with Katrina despite me being perfectly clear that I have a girlfriend that I live with. To that end, the very first phrase they taught me was one that translated as "You are very beautiful. Can I date you?" They encouraged me to try out the new phrase on a very shy and slightly tipsy Katrina.

Instead I turned in my chair and motioned the waitress to come over to the table. She was probably expecting the whitey to order another round of beer in his heavily-accented English. Instead she turned bright red when I busted out with some of the only words in Filipino / Tagalog that I knew. She smiled nervously, quickly shook her head "no" and then made a beeline for the front door of the bar.

The four of us roared in laughter. We toasted new friends and new languages, beer sloshing all over the table. After a long pull on my San Mig Light, I turned towards the door to see what had become of the waitress who had so grievously wounded my heart. Through a window I could see her talking to a female co-worker and glancing in my direction. And even though I spoke only one phrase of Filipino / Tagalog, I read her lips as clear as day.

"Ang ganda mo. Ligawan kita?"

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Frustrating

I've been thinking about actually playing some poker now that I have some time for it. There are three tournament series currently running: the L.A. Poker Classic, the Caesars Mega Stack Series, and the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza. And out of those three tournament series, I'm having troubling finding even one event to play for a reasonable amount of money.

The problem is that I prefer to play something that's NOT no-limit hold'em. Vegas cardrooms, it seems, have become unfamiliar with any other game. How times have changed in five short years. These are my options:

L.A. Poker Classic (Jan. 22 - Feb. 20; 34 side events)

$545 Limit Hold'em - January 24 [I was in Melbourne]
$335 Seven-Card Stud - January 26 [I was in Melbourne]
$335 Omaha Hi/Lo - January 27 [travel day to Manila]
$335 Limit Hold'em - January 29 [I was in Manila]
$545 Limit Hold'em - February 2 [travel day to Vegas]
$545 O.E. - February 4 [I guess I could have hustled down to L.A. for this...]
$545 Seven-Card Stud - February 6 [the only real option but ugh, stud]

The LAPC is one of the few tournament series with a decent spread of non-NLHE tournaments. The problem is that they're all crammed into the beginning of the schedule -- when I was overseas. After tomorrow, the only non NLHE events are a few four-figure buy-in PLO tourneys and a few four-figure buy-in "H.O.R.E.S." tourneys.

I understand that the general structure of the LAPC is to have the smaller buy-in tourneys at the beginning of the festival, but there isn't a single fixed-limit tournament other than H.O.R.E.S. for the last two weeks of the festival prior to the main event. This, despite the fact that there are FIVE separate three-figure buy-in NLHE events. Maybe it's worth a talk with Matt Savage the next time I see him.

The sad thing is, even with the early-weighted schedule, the LAPC is the best of the offerings...

Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza (Feb. 2 - Feb. 23; 25 events)

$330 Omaha Hi/Lo - Sunday, February 8
$330 H.O.R.S.E. - Sunday, February 15
$330 Pot-Limit Omaha - Saturday, February 21

Everything else offered is no-limit hold'em. I think, of these three, I would potentially play the H.O.R.S.E. and maybe the PLO if I were really feeling like cracking out. But the H.O.R.S.E. is the best option of the bunch.

Caesars Mega Stack Series (Feb. 1 - Feb. 26; 27 events)

There are NO tournaments other than no-limit hold'em offered during this series. The same is also true of Bellagio's Five Star World Poker Classic later this spring. There are fifteen events in that series that are not the Main Event or a satellite. All are no-limit hold'em.

Yes, yes, I know there's this thing called the Internet, on which you can "play poker" at a site called "Full Tilt Poker" that's currently running a tournament series called "FTOPS" which has several non-NLHE offerings. Some of us prefer to play live games though. And the fact that FTOPS and WCOOP are so successful suggests that there's room in the casino-tournament schedules for a few more non-NLHE events.

Seriously, what does it take to get anything more than a nominal spread of decently structured non-NLHE tournaments offered at a casino for a reasonable price? Aren't people sick yet of playing nothing but NLHE all the time?

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Preparing for the Future

Slowly re-adjusting to things like "Pacific Time" and "actually seeing the sun". Who knew the world could be lit up so brightly?

Now that I'm once again on furlough, I finally have time to turn to some business-related projects that were languishing while in Melbourne and Manila. Sixteen-hour days were the norm in Melbourne. Apart from jotting out a few thoughts on this page every now and again, I didn't have time for much else but a stress-relieving beer at the end of the night and some sleep. The days were a bit easier in Manila (only twelve hours) but by then I was so close to being home I just pushed things off.

I love what I do right now, of course, but that doesn't mean I'm not out there looking for interesting opportunities.

I see that people are planning various social activities over the summer, all of which conflict with the World Series of Poker. It's unclear what's going to happen with the WSOP this summer in terms of coverage. Most likely PokerNews will not be the exclusive live update provider that it was for each of the previous two years. Whether that means I'll be able to attend the social outings or will be covering the WSOP in some other manner remains to be seen.

Right now it's time to get to work.

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Jiggity Jig

After four grueling weeks on the road, I arrived at McCarran Airport's understated Terminal 2 at about 11:30pm Monday night. Theoretically Terminal 2 is the terminal that makes McCarran an "international" airport (since when is Hawaii an international destination?), but it's clearly the second son of the airport -- horribly signed, dimly lit and seemingly half-abandoned. I was reminded of the airport in the Stephen King novella "The Langoliers". Given that I was flying from the future into the past, it probably wasn't far off. Thankfully CK picked me up before the langoliers could get me.

I have a few weeks to rest and recover and for the first time I really need it. I've got some pretty bad jet lag.

The Asian Poker Tour Philippines Main Event final table was the shortest final table I've ever covered -- an expeditious 2:45. Compare that to my last final table in Manila, the Asia Pacific Poker Tour Phillipines Main Event final table in November, which went for 15 hours. For those gigs, I'm not paid by the hour. I therefore choose option A, where every all-in and call results in a bust-out no matter who tables the better hand. There's no justice in poker, which suits me fine as long as it results in an elimination.

What's next? Good question. There are at least three different gigs over the next six weeks that I may potentially be covering. We'll see if any of them materialize. For now, I need a nap.

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