stevesbets

It is a very common occurrence for people to beg for money in the chat on full tilt. It is a site that prides itself on allowing players to learn, chat and play with the pros so in order to accomplish the chat thing, they have few restrictions on who can chat at what tables. The standard request is for $5 and people will say things as extreme as, “$5 will save my life, could someone PLEASE send it to me”. Most of the time, they will offer something more back when they win by saying something like, “Hey could someone transfer me $5, when I get up to $25 I’ll send you $10 back”. Yesterday I saw the following comment:

hamburgler00 (Observer): Hey guys, I just signed up and Im not sure
about depositing on here yet? Could any of you throw me like 5
dollars so I can try out this site before I decide to put on the minimum
of $50? If I decide to put on $50 I’ll give you your 5 bucks back.

Now, I am in no way offended by the fact that people are begging for gambling money. If anything it makes me happy because we need as many poker players as we can get. However the logic of this request drives me nuts. Aside from the usual reason not to send money to random people (because you have no idea if they are good to their word), even if you take EVERYTHING this beggar says to be the 100%  truth, you still wouldn’t want to take him up on his offer. He really needs to work on the structure of his money requests.

Growing up I drank a ton of Coke and Pepsi. People always told me that no good would come from drinking all that soda. Only on my recent Vegas trip did I learn just how wrong they were.

Poker players have a habit of betting on just about anything from how high they can jump to how many 3 pointers they can make in a row to the gender of the next person to walk around the corner. My friend Luke (http://lukekim.blogspot.com) has been offering action lately on a coke pepsi taste test. His rules are simple, people get an hour to correctly differentiate between 10-20 cups randomly filled by him with either Coke or Pepsi. He first mentioned this bet to me months ago and since I’m not a hustler, I instantly told him that i was pretty sure I could do it. Since then, he did the bet with 5 people and every single one has lost. I was still confident, so upon arriving in Vegas, I booked 1k in action with both him and his friend Andrew at 2 to 1 odds that I could correctly differentiate 10 cups.

Throughout the trip we trash talked back and forth about the upcoming bet, no matter what I said, he responded, “I have heard it all before and the people still lose”. The big night came and I devised a strategy. Luke and Andrew  filled and anonymously labeled 10 cups and sealed the answer key away into an envelope. I had one hour which was more than enough time to taste each cup multiple times.  With the aid of scratch paper, I did the first tasting and wrote down what I suspected each cup was. I was sure that the 2nd cup i tasted was coke, so anytime I drank one that I was unsure about, I went back to that second cup to instantly compare (I called it my litmus coke). I then took a ten minute break and went back and tried each cup again. After the third tasting, I confirmed all my answers and was ready to submit. When I told Luke and Andrew that I had 7 cokes and 3 pepsis Andrew exclaimed, “Crap I think he got it”. It turned out I was the first person to win the Coke-Pepsi challenge, a title about which I am very proud.

I just busted out of the 2008 World Series main event. I was up to 100k in chips at one point (5x starting stack) which was pretty good, but after that not a single hand went my way and I experienced a slow death over the next 6 hours or so. After busting, I headed for a cab to the Palms where I am staying.

Now just to preface this story for people that aren’t poker players, everyone in Vegas knows that the WSOP is going on at the RIO, and when someone walks out dressed head to toe in poker gear and sunglasses, pretty much every cab driver knows that he just busted from the 10k tournament.  Usually after losing something like that, the last thing someone wants to hear is small stakes gambling stories. With that in mind, the cab driver says, “Oh man, they gotcha huh, was it fast or slow” I responded with some joke and he was silent for a little while, then went on the following diatribe with a totally flat, slowish sounding affect. The only things I said the whole time were comments like, “nice” or “yeah”. The parenthetical comments are my comments to the reader, not part of his quote.

“I turned 20 dollars into 200 dollars at blackjack yesterday, it was awesome. The thing is, blackjack is a simple game but most people play it terrible anyway. My thing is, I wait for the dealers to bust. See most people don’t know, they have to hit up until 16 and can only stand on 17 or above. Like, if I have 12 and the dealer has 16 (note here that you can never know if the dealer has 16 when you are making your decisions, I assumed he meant 6) there’s like at least a 50 50 chance he’ll bust, I mean he needs an ace…2…3 wait no…2…3…4… no ace…5….he needs like a 2-5 to not bust and that would pretty much be a miracle card. So anyway my friend yell at me, how can u stay on 12, only a ten can bust you! And I say, dude, you have to let them bust. I mean like if if I have a 12 and they have an 18, I’ll probably hit (once again you can’t know they have an 18, I assume he means an 8, if you know they have 18 and you don’t hit on 12 that would be kinda bad play). So anyway, I know what I’m doing, then this one hand, I get 11 vs a 10, I decide to just hit because I”m not feeling the double and I pull 21, then the very next hand I get 11 vs a 10 again, this time I decide to double and i get 13. I guess those are just the kind of things us gamblers have to live with. You’re a poker player man, poker players love my blackjack stories (I was trying so hard not to laugh at this moment) I always bring a big smile to their faces, I guess because they are really into gambling.”

At this point we arrive at the destination. If you didn’t think this was funny let me know, maybe it was one of those had to be there things, but as I got out of the cab I broke out laughing, the valet guy was very confused.

“

I arrived in Las Vegas 3 days ago to play in the main event of the Word Series of Poker. The first thing I noticed upon arrival was the massive advertising presence that pokerstars has this year compared to past years. They had banners all over the airport, the palms (where they put up players this year) practically looked like “pokerstars casino” due to all the signage and every employee donning a shirt with the pokerstars logo. Also their hospitality suite was in a far more central location (two years ago it was in a random room in a random tower of Treasure Island) than usual. They upgraded supernovas to palms place which I have to commend, my room is spectacular.

I played  in day 1a and managed to make it through the day with about 3x starting stack. I have an absurd 5 day wait till day 2 which is July 8th on my 25th birthday. On day 1 play was almost ludicrously bad and I hope that continues. Some highlights included two people getting all in on a k52 flop in a 1500 chip pot at 100 200 blinds for 30k (about avg) stacks each with KJ and K6. After K6 lost he sat there befuddled, shaking his head saying over and over,”I just knew he had a higher kicker”. An older gentleman who was at my table for the last 60% of the day managed tobuild a 100k stack wiht one move only, shoving all in with the nuts no matter how big the pot is, what position he’s in, or what street the hand is on. He shoved 20k into a 1k chip pot on the turn out of position on a board of T J Q K rainbow. He shoved 30k into a 5k pot on a kj28 board with 2 hearts and somehow got called by kqhh (he had 22 and held), and he hit the nut flush vs top set and managed to win a massive pot that way too. What a player. My tables were all pretty full of players like this except for a breif stint at a table with 5 players that I have played over 500 high stakes sngs on stars with apiece. I think as a general rule the older the avg age of a wsop table the weaker it is. I spoke with some other regular online players and we all think play is worse in the wsop main event than in an avg 10 dollar online tournament which is pretty remarkable.

Aside from just the play, the WSOP has become quite a dog and pony show in its own right. Before starting play, wayne newton took the stage in the center of the amazon room and hummed along to the tune of viva las vegas before saying shuffle up and deal. There are camera, celebrities and throngs of spectaters bascially in every square inch of the room, it’s a pretty cool sight.

Since I have had a few days off in between days of the tournament I have spent time wiht friends and done various vegas activities. Tongiht I went on a helicopter ride over the strip which was pretty cool. Cab drivers are all such characters in Vegas. So far I had a very overly happy woman that reminded me of that woman Mabyl something from last years wsop telecast. Next I had a woman who went on about having a blackbelt in karate and how she constantly had to chase hookers into casinos late at night who tried to jump out of the cab and skip out on the bill. She said everyone in the casinos knows her as the crazy lady that chases hookers. Finally, a disgruntled middle aged man who randomly told us that cab drivers get an ABSURD 50$ a head for every person they deliver to strip clubs. This makes the strip clubs the only reason most cab drivers in vegas even do what they do. I have a few more things to write about but I’ll save them for later. Watch for updates about me on pokernews.com during Day 1b on July 8, and send me birthday presents!