Volunteerism

I will be flying to Africa tomorrow for 2 weeks as head of a Gamblers Without Borders mission. We will be based primarily in northern Uganda and southern Sudan, where we will be giving free courses in Texas Hold'em, Razz and money management.

Sunday nights on Wall Street

Regulators spent the weekend at the headquarters of the New York Federal Reserve in downtown Manhattan, huddled together with the top echelons of the banking and financial community, frantically trying to come up with solutions to the Lehman, Merrill, AIG, WAMU, .... messes.

I spent the weekend huddled together with some gamblers and drifters. Apart from the 3,000 miles that separated us, I felt we had a lot in common.

Moving in

Moved into my new quarters yesterday, just below the I15 overpass near Decatur. I am told there is a great WiFi spot 50 feet from here. But first things first - I'm more concerned with tonight's dinner at the moment. And why I stubbornly continue to play above my limits.

Moving on

The shelter officially closes tomorrow. I have several living options available, including Howard Lederer's backyard toolshed. The current evacuation of New Orleans as Gustav approaches helps me keep things in perspective.

Michael Phelps - The Beginning

Out of action

Even before Las Vegas poker rooms were going through the typical August doldrums, I was given the green light to multitable $2-$5 NLHE at a major Strip casino. On Wednesday night, while brooding over a bad beat I had taken on Table 7 and my poorly executed $100 bluff called by a jack-high on Table 12, I inadvertently bumped into a cocktail waitress while rushing to Table 15 to post a straddle, causing me to fall into the path of a motorized wheelchair. I escaped with a fractured distal tibia (lower leg) and will be in plaster for 6 weeks.

Abandoned pets

With the increase in foreclosures, people are abandoning their pets as well as their homes. There is absolutely no excuse for this type of behavior and to those guilty of leaving their animals behind, may this be just the beginning of your economic hardships which hopefully will continue on so that you get to see your children go to bed hungry every night.

Tao of Poker

I would be remiss if I didn't throw in a reminder about tomorrow's birthday bash, courtesy of Dr. Pauly and in celebration of his blog's 5th anniversary.

Unfortunately I have no funds online at the moment, but would very much like to play. If someone could transfer me the $5.50, I would be appreciative. Repayment options range from immediate cash if you're in Vegas, to immediate PayPal, to Full Tilt transfer on the 15th, to food stamps.

Please leave a comment or email me (shluha at hotmail dot com).

Bellagio recaps

The change reported in the previous post was short-lived and, as of today, Bellagio's $2-$5 and $5-$10 games have reverted to $500 and $1,500 caps (originally $500 and $1,000).

Bellagio's NL games now uncapped

Effective from 11am today, Bellagio's $2-$5 and $5-$10 NLHE games have no maximum buy-in. Till now they were capped at $500 and $1,000 respectively. The timing of the move is interesting as it coincides with one of the quietest periods of the year. Only time will tell what effect this will have on the ichthyological ecology, but I predict changes in both feeding and migratory patterns.

Stuck

It is an indisputable fact that short playing sessions are generally preferable to longer ones. I have accepted this and found it has paid dividends. Yet once in a while, I find myself inexplicably stuck to a chair because I'm stuck. The frequency of this has decreased over time, but when it does occur it is usually a painful experience.

ESPN WSOP coverage begins

ESPN weekly coverage of the 2008 WSOP events begins tonight, culminating in the live broadcast of the final table of the Main Event on November 9th. Airing tonight is the $10,000 Pot Limit Hold'em event, in which the still braceletless Andy Bloch managed yet another second place finish after holding a commanding chip lead with only 4 players remaining. Karma's a bitch.

Effective advertising

When driving from Melbourne to Sydney on the Hume Highway, as I have done on a couple of occasions in the past, one will pass through the New South Wales country town of Yass.

The Bespoke Search Engine

Yahoo.com has always been my home page, yet when I wanted to do a search, I would navigate to Google. That is till now. Following Google's imposition of harsh and selfish monopolistic advertising guidelines on poker and other sites, and the subsequent doctored alteration in their search results, I have broken a long and instinctive search engine habit and now use Yahoo. I believe that Google's bespoke searching is not returning an optimal result and I have a distinct chance of missing out on something that could be valuable, unless I want to keep paging till Results 151-160. I am therefore better off with Yahoo or MSN.

For an update on the recent developments, read Bill Rini and Nat Arem's posts.

When this episode flared up in October 2007, with Google slashing the page rank of renowned blogger John Chow, GOOG was trading at over $700. Tonight in after hours trading, GOOG is at $492 after disappointing 2nd quarter 2008 earnings. Google, clearly the answer lies elsewhere - please come to your senses.

Venetian Slot Tourney

I was invited to a slot tourney at the Venetian, together with a comped suite for 3 nights. When your current digs are a homeless shelter in foreclosure, this is like winning the Powerball. The walk from St. Luke's shelter to the Strip should take about 25 minutes but there was an Excessive Heat Warning issued on Sunday, so it came as no surprise that I barely staggered into the Palazzo completely dehydrated, and before passing out I managed to run into, knock down and break their mini-David figurine situated 5 feet inside the fountain pool in the marbled lobby entrance, and reputedly valued at $2,500,000.

After filling in a few insurance forms and mumbling my apologies in broken Italian, I was carried to my suite in the adjoining Venetian on a stretcher. I would have preferred the gondola. Still, with the slot tourney scheduled to open in 12 hours time, I was thankful that my right index finger was uninjured.

The next day who should I run into but Grubby, who was also playing in the tourney. Luckily he was seated next to me, enabling him to apply an ice compress to my forehead with his right hand while hitting the slot button with his left. After the last session, we took a stroll to the Mirage where I partook in some $1-$2 NLHE, while he opted for the $70 SNG.

Sitting in the 6 seat at my table was 95-year-old Jack Ury, the oldest player in the 2008 WSOP Main Event. He proudly told us that he was still in after Day One. I had occasion to play one hand with him when his flopped baby flush took down my TPTK for a $50 pot. After I tabled my hand, it took him about 10 seconds to turn over his cards. This, however, was attributable to gerontological rather than slowrolling factors. God bless him.


Grubby took down the SNG and I lost $133. After an enjoyable afternoon, we headed back to the Venetian and parted ways. I didn't place in the tourney but at least Grubby won $100 free slot play.

Tonight I read that Jack Ury was eliminated (Day 2B). "I can't walk, can't see, can't hear, but I can still play poker!" said Ury to PokerNews reporter TassieDevil. "I'll be back again next year...if I'm still alive!"

Sweet dreams are made of this

Commiserations to the bloggers who didn't make it past Day One. And to those that did (Iggy, Loretta8 and any others that I don't know of), please continue to rip through the field.

Maybe next year

Negotiations for the sponsorship of my $10,000 2008 WSOP Main Event entry fee broke down at 3:30am this morning. I am bitterly disappointed considering how close we were to an actual agreement.
I prefer not to get into specifics, but the main stumbling block was my insistence that my kidney was not to be removed before November were I to make the final table.

You call, it's all over ... the front page of Yahoo!, baby

Scotty Nguyen's bracelet in the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event makes the front page of Yahoo!

PEACE and good trading, Commisso

It was with great excitement that I followed Shamus's coverage of the epic 6-hour heads-up battle in the WSOP $5,000 NLHE Six-Handed event last night, which lead to the ultimate victory of Joe Commisso.

I "met" Joe many years ago on EliteTrader, an online trading community. He was young and bright back then and it appears nothing has changed.

Congratulations, Joe, on the bracelet and the accompanying $911,855!

Poker Hall of Shame IV

There's always a few rotten apples to spoil a good lineup, and apparently the MGM Grand is no exception. Yesterday, harper983 posted the following on 2+2 :

Playing 1/2 cash game at the MGM. Three players are involved in a pot with about $100 in it, and on the river the board reads 8A8x9 rainbow. UTG checks, mid pos. checks, and the button checks and turns over the 8d and puts it on top of his other card and says "I got the 8". Dealer looks down and repeats what he says, mid pos. mucks, and UTG flips over A9. Dealer grabs buttons cards, buries them in the muck, and pushes pot to UTG. Button tries to stop her, but isn't quick enough. Dealer calls the floor, tells them what happened, that she saw his 8 and others at the table confirm, and they rule that he has to flip over both cards and he's hands dead. UTG rakes the pot and tips dealer $15. Button gets pissed and cashes out.

Just wondering what others would do in this situation as the dealer, floor, and UTG.

BTW UTG is a dealer there and I saw him dealing the next day.

The general consensus seems to be that the dealer should have given the button a chance to show both cards by saying something like "I can't turn over your hand." Unfortunately the whole incident reeks of collusion and flies in the face of the maxim that justice must be seen to be done.

And a big kudos to the UTG douchebag dealer, a great ambassador for the interpretation of the spirit of poker rules in general, and playing at the MGM in particular.