Michael Craig's Journal

It’s 10:10 PM as I dictate this. I’m driving home to Scottsdale for 36 hours. I played in the Stud Eight-or-Better tournament, without any success. This makes, I think, seven events without cashing. The totality of that is depressing, but I generally felt good about how I played. I can go back over some particular hands and point out some mistakes, but I’m still learning, and probably always will be. But in general, I played well, regardless of the result. And there’s still the main event.

There is definitely a feeling at the Series that time is running out. Everything feels a bit more rushed and desperate. No one is counting on the main event to “make” their Series, except me.

There were two big tournaments going on at the Rio today. At one, the rails were thick with spectators, and the big names were everywhere.

The other tournament was the one that I was playing, where the guy in seat seven was the same guy who sat in seat seven at my razz table. He spent nine hours with me two days ago and there wasn’t a glimmer of recognition from him. We had one dealer for over four hours.

The event had a $1,000 buy-in and we were supposed to receive 1,000 in chips. They announced just before the start that we would be receiving 1,500. This was generally regarded as a positive thing, though the pros told me otherwise.

In the $1,000 “afternoon of 3,000 guns” tournament, a half-dozen pros told me that move made it a cheater’s paradise, providing the best value for buying-in and rat-holing some chips for a later event. No one mentioned that. Because it was a split-pot limit event, no one was moving tables for a couple hours, so there weren’t the same opportunities for stealth. I don’t know if even the most degenterate thief would play 2-4 hours of Stud Eight-or-Better to further his criminal plans.

The pros were complaining that it was a change without consequence. With the addition of the lower 10-20 level (and absurdly high 5 ante).

One pro said, “At such a low limit, nobody gained or lost anything. They just made the day an hour longer.” Another complained that based on the denominations each player received, players and dealers had to spend so much time making change every hand that few hands got played. (That was true. It was silly how much time was spent making change during the first level.)
 

NoShamBo

Phil Gordon was wearing civilian attire today, carrying a briefcase and a clipboard. He was going around signing up players for a $500 buy-in RoShamBo tournament for charity for Tuesday morning. Because I had planned on leaving for Scottsdale if I didn’t make Day 2 of SEOB, I told him I wasn’t sure.
He kept coming back to me, telling me how many people had signed up. 20. 48. 60. At 60, I told him I’d sign up and pay if I had the option of playing PhoneShamBo from Scottsdale if I returned home. He declined, which tells me that although Phil Gordon is a great guy for a lot of reasons, he’s not as wired into RoShamBo as he thinks he is. PhoneShamBo would have made news, gotten attention, taken this sick little game to a newer, sicker level.
Phil just wasn’t thinking big enough.
 

Expect things to spin completely out of control

The next seventeen days are going to be extremely hectic. Even though I’m home, I’m giving an interview at some time to an AP reporter who is either going to do a profile of me at the World Series or is using that as a subterfuge to get Andy Beal\’s phone number. Wednesday morning, I do my regular bit on Louie Bellina’s radio show. I usually do every other Wednesday but he wants to do every Wednesday during the Series. It’s a paying gig … allegedly. You can listen their the station’s internet feed. I’m usually scheduled for 7:30 AM CDT, though sometimes I don’t come on until close to 8.

Then I drive straight to Vegas and things start going crazy: Pamela Anderson, Robin Leach, Tony Holden and Des Wilson, Amy Calistri, Full Tilt’s party at PURE, Christopher (one of the Yale guys who offered to buy my Matusow baseball jersey last November for $1,000), my friend Ken Kurson’s former neighbor Bruce, literary agent and great poker player Greg Dinkin, ESPN.com’s Andrew Feldman, a bunch of other people.

Thursday starts media day at the Series and, I was surprised to hear, the induction into the Poker Hall of Fame of Billy Baxter and T.J. Cloutier. That day is usually a circus, plus a reunion of all my poker-writer friends, old and new.

Who even knows what\’s going to happen when the Main Event starts Friday? 6,500? 7,000? 8,000? And what about the World Gaming Expo? All the catching up, checking things out, playing Sunday, playing who-knows-when after that. Trying to interview Phil Gordon, Erick Lindgren, Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer, Rafe Furst, Mike Matusow, Perry Friedman, and Andy Bloch to finish the FULL TILT book.

I have no idea how it’s all going to play out, but I promise it’ll be interesting, and that I’ll keep reporting it. I’m also trying to come up with something interesting and unique for reporting in this blog about the final table on August 10.

P.S. - If you are on AOL and type keyword “Las Vegas”, you’ll see a picture of me playing poker. You can get to Robin Leach’s Luxe Life from there, or go to its web site. I am his guest columnist for July 25.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 10:33 pm and is filed under My favourites:.