Poker
stcynic | October 12, 2005Paul Phillips posted this parody of Rounders on his blog (not written by him) that, like the Aristocrats joke, you need a little knowledge to really get how funny it is. You need to have seen the movie Rounders and you need to understand how to play pot limit Omaha rather than the more popular Hold em. And you need to understand that Omaha is more popular in Europe, while Hold em is more popular in America. But if you understand those things as reference points, you're going to laugh your posterior off. Do not drink anything while reading this or you'll put your keyboard at risk. If you've…
stcynic | August 11, 2005Last June, I wrote a post about the Tiltboys, a group of poker players from the bay area that have become legendary in the poker community over the last few years. Describing the group as "Animal House with high SAT scores", I wrote that the Tiltboys are a living testament to just how amusing a life devoted to excess and debauchery can be. My post caught the eye of Kim Scheinberg, the one and only woman to reach Tiltboy status. Kim was in the process of writing/editing a book about the group and asked if she could use some of what I wrote for the marketing campaign for the book, promising to…
stcynic | July 23, 2005Tonight I'm gonna be on the other side of the poker table than I'm used to. I'm running (and dealing for) a charity poker tournament here locally. They promised me all the iced tea I could drink and I'll have a nice view of the lake while I work, so what the heck. Maybe I can even recruit some new (and hopefully bad) players to our regular Thursday night game.
stcynic | July 14, 2005Well, the World Series of Poker is down to 27 players and things seem to be falling right into place for ESPN to have a compelling storyline for their broadcast of it. The three biggest names left in the field are all in the top 5 in chip stack. Mike Matusow is in first place with $5.1 million; Phil Ivey is in second place with $4.6 million; and Greg Raymer is in 5th place with $3.8 million. Today the action moves from the Rio to Binion's downtown, the birthplace of the event, and they will play down to the final table of 9 players. And in the initial seating assignments for today, Ivey and…
stcynic | July 13, 2005Raymer took a couple big hits late last night, losing to a rivered inside straight and taking KQ up against AQ, but he's still in the hunt with a little over $750,000 chips. With 58 players remaining, that puts him just below the average chip stack. Phil Ivey is still in the top 5 with just over $2 million, but Mike Matusow has made a charge and now stands in 2nd place with a little over $2.5 million. The chip leader is Tim Phan with $3.2 million. Also still very much alive are Lee Watkinson ($1.2 million) and John Juanda ($841,000), both very dangerous players.
ESPN is surely drooling over…
stcynic | July 12, 2005This has the makings of a truly incredible story in the poker world. As play began today, the chip leader was none other than last year's winner, Greg (Fossilman) Raymer with just over a million chips. Should Raymer win again this year, that would almost certainly rank as the greatest achievement in poker history. Three players in history have won back to back WSOP main event championships: Johnny Moss in 1970 and 1971, Doyle Brunson in 1976 and 1977, and Johnny Chan in 1987 and 1988 (and finished second in 1989). But when Johnny Moss won it the first time, the title was voted on by the…
stcynic | July 11, 2005Today, the 5th day of the World Series of Poker, begins the 3rd day of the World Series of Poker. How is that? Well there were so many entries that they had to divide them up into three groups for the first day's play. 1/3 played their first day last Thursday, down to about 600 players, then the second 1/3 on Friday and the last 1/3 on Saturday. Sunday they all merged for day two for everyone and played down to 569 players. Day 3 should begin any moment. The average chip count is about $98,000 going into day 3, with the highest chip count being $464,000. Interesting to note that last year's…
stcynic | July 8, 2005The World Series of Poker main event started yesterday at the Rio in Las Vegas with the first flight of over 1000 players. Last year's field of over 2500 has been more than doubled to 5600. Paul Phillips, poker player and raconteur extraordinaire, is keeping a daily diary for Slate magazine. The first installment is here. It includes a brief synopsis of his banning from Binion's, home of the World Series until this year, in 2001, a situation which led to me being barred from that property as well. I didn't mind that, since I thought it was a cesspool anyway and wasn't planning to play in the…
stcynic | July 8, 2005We had the craziest poker game last night. We play a $1/$2 pot limit hold em game. Not really a big money game, and usually the pots get bigger toward the end of the night as people loosen up, try to push people around with a big stack, or try to recoup their losses. Well last night was insane from the first hand and got more insane as the night went on. 3 of our regular players are in Vegas for the World Series of Poker, but we had two of our occasional players show up and one new guy who was just about the worst poker player I've ever seen. Anyway, just listen to how things got started...…
stcynic | June 29, 2005Jennifer Tilly, an actress I've always really liked despite her ditzy demeanor, just won the World Series of Poker Women's No Limit Hold Em tournament. She's the girlfriend of Phil (the Unibomber) Laak, a World Poker Tour champion, and obviously he's taught her a thing or two about the game. Just the day before, Laak finished second to the immortal Johnny Chan, who won a record 10th World Series of Poker bracelet in the $2500 Pot Limit Hold Em event.
stcynic | May 3, 2005Here's good law enforcement. A poker club is holding a tournament at a local restaurant in a small town near Colorado Springs. The owner of the restaurant has checked it out and thinks it's all legal (the gambling laws are often quite vague and opinions can differ). The police find out about it, and disagree. But rather than go down and talk to the folks there, the police just decide to bust in with guns drawn and put to people's heads, shouting and screaming. These were officers from the Colorado Springs Metro Vice, Narcotics and Intelligence Unit. They just seemed to have forgotten the part…
stcynic | April 29, 2005I found out last night that the Michigan State Police are investigating a local VFW hall for having poker games on the weekends. I've played in said game a few times and know many of the players. It's a group of mostly Vietnam and even Korean war vets who sit in the back room a couple nights a week and play poker instead of playing pool out front. Someone apparently decided to call the police and report it, with the speculation being that it's someone who wants the post commander's job. The State Police have apparently been investing a lot of time and money in busting up this obvious threat…
stcynic | April 20, 2005Paul Phillips, poker and scrabble player extraordinaire and one of the smartest and funniest guys around, is now a proud papa. His lovely wife Kathleen gave birth to Ivy Simone Phillips on Monday. Pictures here. Congratulations, Paul.
stcynic | April 10, 2005Posting was light since Friday because I had a couple of friends in town for a weekend of poker and BBQ. On Saturday, we went to Soaring Eagle casino to play poker and I had what is simply the most bizarre and amazing session of poker in my life. You're not gonna believe some of this. Soaring Eagle spreads hold em games of 3/6, 6/12 and 10/20 (meaning the minimum and maximum betting amounts in the game). The 3/6 game is what we call a "no foldem holdem" game because the bets are so small that half the table stays in to the end to see if they can hit their hand, and one of them usually does. I…
stcynic | March 16, 2005Anyone who watches poker on TV knows that Phil Hellmuth is the ultimate sore loser. Those of us who followed poker before TV got ahold of it have known that for years, and we've also taken a good deal of delight in watching Paul Phillips make fun of Hellmuth. You can always amuse yourself by reading Hellmuth's columns in Card Player, where he routinely indulges his ego and makes an ass of himself. Phillips has a bit of fun with his latest column here, wherein Hellmuth actually criticizes someone else for poor etiquette. Another irony meter bites the dust.
stcynic | January 28, 2005It's been a while since I wrote anything about poker and things have been much too serious lately, so here's a post few people will care the least bit about from last night's game. We had two hands that were really pretty crazy. The first was very expensive for a couple of people. Flop is 10 J Q of clubs. Shane bets the pot, Jeff calls, Kevin calls. Turn is the 4 of clubs. Shane bets the pot, Jeff raises, Kevin reraises, Shane reraises again all in. Jeff agonizes for a minute and folds, Kevin calls. River is a blank. The cards are turned over. Kevin has the A of clubs for the nut flush...and…
stcynic | September 22, 2004Okay, so at least one guy was bothered that I revealed that Annie Duke won last night's Tournament of Champions poker tournament on ESPN, but there was still a LOT of fun to be had by watching it. Most notably, you could watch Phil Hellmuth once again make himself look like a total ass. During the tournament, they were showing snippets of interviews with him where, at one point, he said, essentially, "I know it makes me look bad when I talk so much after losing a hand. Why can't I just say 'nice hand' and be done with it? I'm working on it. I want to be known as the gentleman of poker instead…
stcynic | September 18, 2004A week ago, I wrote rather forcefully (and, I believe, correctly) that it was far too early to tell whether the Killian memos were forgeries and that those on both sides who wanted to assert with certainty one way or the other were substituting wishful thinking for reality. Well now that another week has passed, that is no longer the case. At this point, I'd say the case that they are forgeries is quite strong and it's time to get off the fence. Interestingly, while the blogosphere is busy patting itself on the back claiming to have scooped Big Media on it, almost all of the reasons initially…
stcynic | September 16, 2004The behavior of Josh Arieh during the World Series of Poker main event, aired recently on ESPN, has sparked a great deal of controversy in the poker world. For those who haven't been watching, Josh Arieh is a terrific poker player, one of the up and coming pros to watch in the future. But here are a couple of examples of his behavior during just this one tournament:
In a hand with Harry Demetriou when they were down to less than 3 tables, Demetriou had AJ unsuited and Arieh had 9h10h. The flop came AKQ with two hearts. Arieh bet, Demetriou raised him (he had more chips than Arieh), Arieh…
stcynic | September 15, 2004Rick Dakan, while praising my blog in general, takes me to task here and here for occasionally revealing the winners of a poker tournament before they've aired on TV. I do apologize for diminishing his ability to enjoy the suspense of those tournaments on television, but I should also say that I'm not likely to stop doing that, and perhaps I should explain why. It never even occurs to me that it's a spoiler, primarily because I have never watched a poker tournament on TV without knowing in advance who won the tournament. That's because I read the poker newsgroup, which has constant updates on…