Sleeping through the Night

I made it through the night for the first time last night, getting a complete night’s sleep for the first time since WSOP. I did wake up around 3:30 or so, but headed right back to sleep. Sweetie and I watched three episodes of The Closer, which is just one of the best things on TV right now. In honor of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, it’s Kyra Sedgwick’s world. Of course, her accent for the show doesn’t actually exist in the ATL anymore, but what the heck.

The list of stuff for me to tackle is pretty long here at the home base, including completing all of the home office stuff. Printer is down, and I have a good bit of stuff on the company front. One of the objectives of heading to the WSOP was to see if there is any synergy between my company and the world of poker. There could be, but we’ll see if I can bring any to fruition. The loyalty model for online poker sites has some similarities to the long-distance market of the 80′s and 90′s, where financial incentives were rolled out to get consumers to switch long-distance carriers. AT&T and others found that what they attracted was consumers who would switch easily rather than the more profitable consumers who could be served and become loyal. My impression among online sites is that buying traffic and players is by far the simplest way to go after a quick hit, with minimal work toward really determining how to build sustainable traffic and growth.

During the WSOP broadcast, Daniel Negreanu was critical of running events during the Main Event, saying it watered down the value of the bracelet (photos from one of these events). Bracelets per total WSOP participants has to be at an all-time low, I would assume, although I haven’t crunched the numbers. You be the judge of which is more valuable, winning a bracelet in the 80′s when the field for an early event was 150 or Madsen or Chen taking a couple when the fields are 1000-2000 players.

I do want to play in this thing next year, so the quest will be how to qualify for as many events as possible. I’d like to play in the Main Event, as well as 3-5 other events. And I don’t want to pay the full amount next year as I didn in Event #6 (my $2k NLHE experience). To do that, I need to play more tourneys. Having watched a bunch of people playing a bunch of events and seeing many great players come up short, there is definitely a numbers thing to all this.

l to r:  Paul Wasicka, Jamie Gold, Johnny Chan, Rhett ButlerNot sure where all the negative vitriole has come from regarding Jamie Gold and his victory.  Here are the top things I’ve heard and my thoughts:

• He was hit by the deck.  Well, I think it’s a bit more complicated than that.  He was paid off for good hands, his good hands ran up against good hands, big flops (like flopping his straight) make it look like he’s a luckbox.  He had a good run of cards, but when you have a chiplead like he did and play alot of hands, you’ll get a chunk that will be good.
• His family are rednecks.  This may or may not be true.  Sure, the gang was an unusual mix of body-builder buddies and loud ladies, but the whole crowd was pretty much donkified the last two days.  WSOP announcers didn’t help either, constantly asking folks to cheer on their favorites.
• Gold won’t be a good ambassador.  This depends on what he plans to do with his newfound fame and poker experience.  I’m assuming his success will look more like Moneymaker’s than Raymer’s post-title, as I don’t get the impression he’s a top player grounded in the higher-level strategy that others are.
• We wanted Cunningham.  OK, everyone did, but he didn’t win.  Get over it, everyone.  Who would have been better for poker?  Maybe Richard Lee, shunning the commercialism which has now fully enveloped poker.  Maybe Erik Friberg, ushering in Europe and Scandanavia and the young online pro as the new face of poker.  Maybe Doug Kim, representing Asian Americans who are virtually shunned by the marketing machines of the online sites as well as representing the more casual young online player.
• Jamie Gold is a horrible player.  I don’t think so, although I would have really preferred to see him lose the chip lead.  You can fault Paul Wasicka for this, for not calling the all-in with his open ended straight flush draw.  He would have been only $11MM in chips down, then we at least would have had a match on our hands vs. getting talked into shrugging and calling with 10-10.

Up for more coffee and then head into the day.  I have to go to the dentist today, so wish me luck for this afternoon.  SWAG ALERT:  first to leave a comment and email me at csquard@gmail.com gets the PartyPoker t-shirt that they gave away at the final table.  Then I’ll post where we are on swag and try to get everything out tomorrow.