Since I felt my I Had Outs experience should not be included with my incendiary post about the WSOP, I continue with a second entry about my trip to Brooklyn to visit the legendary Dawn Summers and her I Had Outs tournament.
I meet Jordan downtown, as we are neighbors, for the trip to Brooklyn. I had never really ventured much in this area before, but Dawn's neighborhood seemed really nice and residential...more Park Slopish than I had imagined.
We enter and the tournament almost looked like it might not occur, but before long we had a full table and I was introduced to some faces that I had read about for a while...Mary, Alceste, Kearns, etc. and of course Dawn herself! And play was underway.
Basically you're allowed 3 rebuys in the first four levels. I had only brought $60 and decided to double buy-in to begin...my usual strategy. Well, right off I am snagged by Jordan early on...he spikes the river to make a straight against QQ. I then bump into Mary's AK against my AJ. How do you say it? Lemon!
So, I rebuy once again, borrowing $30 from Jordan. I proceed to get bluffed off by Kearns, and then run into something that for some reason I have decided to block out, but since others were getting a fourth rebuy and I was at about 2200 chips at 100/200, I rebuy once again with 3000 more...and then I finally start playing some marginally good poker.
Occasionally you feel like you're in a bit of a zone, and my TAG appearance early on started to gain a little bit of respect, combined with a good dose of run-good. I was able to chip up into contention, with new guy Nikos and I fighting on the bubble against Eric and Jordan's big stacks. Nikos was playing rather loose, so I tightened, hoping he would run into some sort of mistake, but he managed to chip up against Jordan while making some good laydowns along the way to put him way ahead of me, and I was back into shove mode. With about 8BB four handed I shove with Jc10c and run into AK, and I miss a K and go out in fourth.
But hey....I Had Outs!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Ladies Event. WTF is the big deal?
Maybe the simple fact is that everyone in WSOP land needs to stir up something newsworthy, but I'm personally sick of reading about the Ladies Event over, and over....and over.
I am not going to languish over my own personal opinion here, but come on, folks! The Ladies Event attracts women who might not otherwise play...to play. Do we not want more people to play poker? Or, do we want to focus on it as some sort of controversy so that more people with decision-making power think that it shouldn't be legal in many states? We are already getting enough bad press because Joran Van Der Sloot decided to thrust his hands all-in on a woman's neck in a casino...do we really need more bad press?
Guesss what? Men have entered many a Ladies Event before, at the WSOP, The Borgata, WPT stops, without a whole lot of fanfare. So, who to blame here? Personally, I'd blame the WSOP reporters and bloggers who have decided to make it newsworthy. All you are doing (Daniel Negreanu included) is giving these interlopers the attention that they are craving. Since it is exponentially more difficult for someone to gain notice in the poker world by ACTUALLY DOING WELL in a tournament, they are getting their attention the easy way. Why encourage it? Well, because while the WSOP is an exciting event, I have to agree with Bill Rini here. The WSOP 'news' community is preoccupied with finding something fantastical to write about instead of just making the chip counts accurate. Let's face it, the same shit goes on at every poker tournament. Bad beats, good runs, just like in baseball there are base hits and double plays. but where it is different is that the color commentary is about the GAME. It seems that the color commentary in poker has gone beyond simple Wicked Chops photos of hot women on the rail. It is no longer about the winners...it is about Shaun Deeb losing a prop bet and playing in the Ladies Event.
WSOP bloggers, I appreciate the work you do (and would probably rather be doing it for two months instead of my own job), but let's focus on the winners...not the losers.
I am not going to languish over my own personal opinion here, but come on, folks! The Ladies Event attracts women who might not otherwise play...to play. Do we not want more people to play poker? Or, do we want to focus on it as some sort of controversy so that more people with decision-making power think that it shouldn't be legal in many states? We are already getting enough bad press because Joran Van Der Sloot decided to thrust his hands all-in on a woman's neck in a casino...do we really need more bad press?
Guesss what? Men have entered many a Ladies Event before, at the WSOP, The Borgata, WPT stops, without a whole lot of fanfare. So, who to blame here? Personally, I'd blame the WSOP reporters and bloggers who have decided to make it newsworthy. All you are doing (Daniel Negreanu included) is giving these interlopers the attention that they are craving. Since it is exponentially more difficult for someone to gain notice in the poker world by ACTUALLY DOING WELL in a tournament, they are getting their attention the easy way. Why encourage it? Well, because while the WSOP is an exciting event, I have to agree with Bill Rini here. The WSOP 'news' community is preoccupied with finding something fantastical to write about instead of just making the chip counts accurate. Let's face it, the same shit goes on at every poker tournament. Bad beats, good runs, just like in baseball there are base hits and double plays. but where it is different is that the color commentary is about the GAME. It seems that the color commentary in poker has gone beyond simple Wicked Chops photos of hot women on the rail. It is no longer about the winners...it is about Shaun Deeb losing a prop bet and playing in the Ladies Event.
WSOP bloggers, I appreciate the work you do (and would probably rather be doing it for two months instead of my own job), but let's focus on the winners...not the losers.
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