The curtain closes on Reno

Last night was an alcohol induced blur, but here's a few things I remember:

Watching Barry Greenstein bowl demonstrated what a perfectionist he is. Jason, Allie and I watched him roll a number of strikes and saw him return from the lane shaking his head. Even though he knocked down all the pins, Barry knew he had gotten lucky and he wasn't happy he had not rolled a perfect ball. He was there bowling with a lady friend and his son, Joe Sebok. Barry left early as he was still in the main event. As I write, he leads with nine people remaining.

Gavin Smith is not such a good bowler. He and Paul, a cameraman for the WPT, competed against Jason and Allie for smallish wagers. Gavin and Paul won both times, though only because Allie is apparently terrible at bowling. I didn't get in the game except to fill in for Allie while he fetched drinks and I rolled a strike on that one bowl. So therefore I had a perfect game. (Like that logic?)

When I met Gavin he asked me, "Do you play poker?" My response? "Not very well."

Shawn Rice and Hoyt Corkins made it down to the lanes. (Natalie, Hoyt's girlfriend, was already there rolling with the rest of us. She graduated from the same Memphis high school class as Allie. Small world me thinks.) I saw that Shawn was wearing a Texas Tech cap and I, wearing my Bama cap, asked him how he liked the Cotton Bowl. (About as well as Jim Anderson I suspect.) Shawn didn't seem to enjoy my teasing as I patted his meaty shoulders in jest.

There were a number of attractive females among the poker media at the lanes and most everyone was wondering who the heck I was. I tried the James Spader bit on Lena, an editor of some sort with All-In who is stunning, but it wasn't working. Gavin tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Leave her alone. I'm banging that tonight." I think he was joking. I think.

Later at the craps table, Gavin, Allie and Kenna James were throwing big bets down. They were being antagonized by a fellow in Cincinnati Reds garb on the opposite end. I don't remember exactly what Gavin told him, but it was something to the effect of "The dark side's going down Spiderman." Or something like that. Got to love the guy. He is a bit of a nut. You may recall from my previous posts that I saw him chewing on some of those plastic fish at BARGE last year.

And one other thing, Courtney Friel is smokin', I mean SMOKIN', in a pair of jeans.

I awoke around noon today and headed down to the poker room. And it was almost completely dead except for the furious action around the three remaining tables. They played from 27 down to the final six today, with the WPT taping tomorrow. What must it be like to be a player in that situation? I would love to find out. I decided not to bother playing in a game. I bid Jason adieu until New Orleans in May and headed toward the room.

On the way I ran into Kyle, a dealer from Cincinnati I had befriended on the trip. He told me he might not be dealing at the WSOP this summer because he's thinking about just playing. Yep, he's considering moving to Vegas and turning pro. The poker hype keeps churning out dreamers. May Kyle's dreams come true.

Hoyt's musings

I kicked back with Jason Kirk, aka the Tennessee Spaceman, and his buddy Allie (sp?) from Memphis last night. Jason is now THE tournament coverage guy for Bluff magazine and got here Monday to cover the main event.

We played some SNGs with some of the fellows who had busted out of the main event as the 590 player field was cut to 200 by day’s end. One of those, Gary Gibbs, finished 10th in the main event of the World Poker Open in Tunica in January. (Allie took 15th in said tournament.) He was eliminated by Gavin Smith in a hand that has been much discussed in the poker world since it was played, a hand in which Gibbs rivered a straight and Smith rivered a flush. Rather than try to explain it here for the uninformed, I’ll send you to this link for a comprehensive examination of the hand:

http://cardplayer.com/poker_magazine/archives/?a_id=15343&m_id=65585

As Gibbs explained to us Monday night, “Gavin was playing for the takeaway and I knew where he was. He didn’t know where I was, but I didn’t know his suit.”

Not surprising in a SNG that featured two final table finishers from Tunica and several participants in the main event in Reno, I did not cash.

I spent most of Tuesday at the Peppermill, playing in a poker and blackjack tournament (though not at the same time), but saw T.J. Cloutier and Mark Seif playing craps before I left. Jason told me T.J. busted out this morning.

His craps play is legendary. I believe Andy Bloch wrote something on his WPT Fan Web site to the effect that if you haven’t been asked by T.J. for a loan you haven’t really arrived in the poker world.

“T.J., you roll more sevens than anyone alive,” I heard someone say as I passed the craps table on the way to catch the shuttle bus.

I was relaxing in my hotel room this evening when I got a call from Natalie, Hoyt Corkins’ girlfriend. The reception was garbled, but I made out that they were in the poker room. So I threw on my shoes and headed downstairs to find Hoyt without his trademark cowboy hat. Clad in a baseball cap and leather jacket, he was chewing on a cigar while sitting in the ten seat in a $25-$50 blinds no limit game. To his right sat Lee Markholt and in the five seat was Kenna James, getting a deep back massage.

In the first hand I observed, Kenna raised under the gun to $400. The action moved to Hoyt and he tossed in $1,600 in chips. The action returned to Kenna, who thought for a moment.

“How much you got behind you Hoyt?” he asked.

Hoyt picked up his stack of hundreds and did a quick mental count.

“Ten thousand,” he replied.

“I raise,” Kenna said. He counted out thirty Benjamins and dropped them into the pot.

Hoyt thought for a minute and then picked up his stack of hundreds as if to call or raise before tossing his cards into the muck.

“Your kings are good,” he said.

I didn’t want to bother Hoyt in the middle of a game, but he welcomed me to sit beside him and ask some questions. So I took Natalie’s seat as she went to Johnny Rocket’s for a milkshake and began prying.

His initial answers were simple and amusing. What’s the hardest part about life on the circuit? Losing. What’s the best part? Winning. Hoyt laughed as he answered.

He explained further.

“When you’ve got your confidence and you can feel things and you’re in the zone,” he said. “That’s the good part about poker.”

“Making a bluff and catching that magic card.” I thought immediately of the trips he made against Phil Hellmuth at the World Poker Finals a few years ago that had the Poker Brat fuming.

Hoyt used to focus on Omaha, and his only WSOP bracelet was in that game back in the 1980s. Back in his cattle farming days, Hoyt played a lot of Omaha in Tunica and Philadelphia, Miss. He finally decided to play no limit hold’em.

“When I saw the TV coverage of the tournaments kick in I thought I would give it a shot,” he said.

Now NLHE is his focus and he loves it.

“It really is the Cadillac of poker. I has a lot of moves and it changes so much.”

Suddenly our interview was interrupted.

“Are you being interviewed?” a played I didn’t recognize called out from the three seat. “You know we’re going to needle you now.”

“I’m from Alabama too,” I told the guy. “So don’t give him too hard a time.”

I asked Hoyt what’s the hardest part about the travel.

“I couldn’t make it without Natalie,” he said. “She takes care of the planning and the packing. Half the time I don’t know what airline we’re flying on.”

He believes having someone to take care of the travel arrangements gives him a small edge.

“Every small edge helps,” he said. “I just come and play poker.”

Hoyt said he plays about 30 major tournaments a year, a mix that includes perhaps 10 World Poker Tour events, 12 World Series of Poker tournaments and a handful of WSOP Circuit events.

“I try to keep the tournaments down because they are mentally draining,” he said.

His advice to young aspiring pros: “If you’re going to school, stay in school. Forget about it.”

That statement is a testament to how difficult it can be to make it on the poker tournament circuit. Hoyt believes some people are born with the ability to succeed while others are not.

“There’s a lot of people trying, but there’s not too many make it,” he said. “The odds are not good.”

I also played poker the other day with Ken Shamrock, a former professional wrestler and current Ultimate Fighting stud. He's not too bad (it was a 10-20 limit hold'em game), but he's still a little rough around the edges. He did put four aces on me though. 

This is the man, the myth, etc. He needs no introduction. 

This is NOT James Spader 

This is James Spader 

The main event begins

Finally, it feels like a real poker tournament is taking place here. There was action. There was urgency. There was Eric Lindren hugging Evelyn Ng and giving Carlos Mortensen a high five. There was Barry Greenstein walking through the room carrying a couple of copies of his book.

And once again, I'm left on the curb. Still disheartened from my bad luck, I didn't even attempt either of the two mega satellites that were held on Sunday. Like Ted and Stephen, I plan to re-focus my energy toward the WSOP. Hopefully, I can win a seat in the main event, as well as some other tournament entries online in the next few months.

Ted just missed getting his seat in today's main event last night and so decided to take off this morning on his seven hour drive back home to Oregon. I'll miss the old fellow. He would make a good father figure -- if my father were a pervert.

We plan to room again in Vegas, at either Binion's or the Plaza.

I saw Hoyt again today, but he didn't have time to talk as the tournament was about to begin. T.J. Cloutier told me last night that he would talk with me this morning, but I didn't see him until he was already seated and ready for the tournament to begin.

"Guess I'll have to catch you another time," I said as I walked up to him.

"I'll be around," he replied. "I've got to teach this WPT Boot Camp after this thing is over."

Other than that, I've just sat up in my room all day, playing online poker. I figured out I can get net access for $11 a day so I decided to take it easy today and use my computer.

A hand from a WPC event

I posted this hand on RGP minutes ago. It's how I busted out of a tourney the other day. This play could be questioned, but most of my other defeats were just plain bad luck (I promise.)

Earlier this week I'm playing in a $330 NLHE event at the World Poker Challenge in Reno when this hand occurs. Comments and criticisms are welcomed and appreciated.

I'm dealt Q-K in the BB when big bully raises from the cutoff seat. Our bully has won some monster pots and has about 6,000 in chips (we started with 1,500) and makes it 150 to go on the 25-50 blinds. I call to see a flop. It comes T-T-5 (rainbow) and I check to bully. He bets 250. I think he could have anything and I would really like to show some cojones so I call, planning to take the pot on the turn. The turn is a J and I check as planned. He bets another 250, a bet that seems to just want me to go away. I pause and then check-raise all in for another 700. I had hardly played a hand and hoped he had noticed my tight image. I think he has to believe I have a T or J and fold given his less than 3 to 1 pot odds. Guess not.

He calls with 8-8.

The river is a blank and IGHN...or up to my room anyway.

What is poker?

What is poker?

It’s an old guy in a trucker’s hat that reads “You should have been a hemorrhoid because you’re such a pain in my ass” laughing with his poker buddies.

It’s the matronly woman who looks like June Cleaver with glasses who plays ok, just well enough to make the final table of a women’s event, but not good enough to compete with the tournament regulars.

It’s the brash Italian who criticizes the June Cleaver type for the questionable plays she makes while the hypocrite calls off many of his chips on even more questionable plays.

It’s the intermediate player in the Alabama cap visiting a far away state and observing all of these characters while wondering himself, “why do we all do it?”

It’s the players of a weekly tournament at the Eldorado Casino in downtown Reno, buying in for $65 and trying to win about $1,300 as the neon lights flash outside and pedestrians brave the cold on their way to and fro.

Three times Tuesday I could have made a sizable score and three times I lost. Never is poker more humbling than when you can’t catch a single break, no matter how many times you try or how well you play. Every time you’re in a big pot or a big hand you just know the river card or the flop is going to turn against you. First, there was the $110 SNG in which I lost on the river, costing me at least $400. Then I played in a 10-20 Omaha H/L game in which I had it on the turn and lost on the river. The pot was about $300-$400. And lastly there was the aforementioned Eldorado tournament, in which the blinds got ridiculous and I raised in the cutoff with A-4 and the guy in the big blind had to call with Q-2 and he won the hand. The next hand I’m in the big blind and most of my chips are in the pot. I lose that one with A-6 to J-J. Bye bye $1,300 pay day. Meanwhile a couple of young players with no clue what they’re doing were still in the thick of things.

Is this what I left my job for? To watch my dreams of riches disappear in the flash of a river card. Am I that bad or just unlucky?

Yesterday afternoon, I came up to the room to rest for awhile and Ted was lying on his bed watching his ubiquitous Fox News. He has to take some pills on Wednesday that kind of conk him out so he usually just takes it easy. As he and I lay on our respective beds watching Bill O’Reilly, Ted said something that chilled me.

“I think of that grandson of mine. He’s 12 now. You fuck around for a couple of years and he’s 14. There’s something missing in that equation.”

My mother is having some heart troubles and is going to a cardiologist in Birmingham next week. It was heart problems that killed her mother. Meanwhile, I’m goofing around in Reno. What the fuck am I doing?

I’ve only spent about three months on the road in the past year, and it’s only a one-year adventure (plus a couple of months), but Ted stays gone six months out of the year on his poker trips.

“I could be making a lot more money at home than I could out here playing poker,” he continued.

“So why do it?” I asked.

“Sometimes you’ve got to get away from the rat race.”

I can’t argue that point. The newspaper began to feel like a rat race after awhile, but I have to wonder if we all spend too much time away from the race in our quest for poker dominancy.

I see so many of the same faces on every tournament stop. How many families is this quest breaking?

I have to think the dealers are the smart ones. Granted, many of them play when they’re not working, but I suppose they watch enough poker that they are good enough to at least break even. When they are working, they make pretty good money.

I finally got the chance to interview Connie Mertens, the dealer from DeValls Bluff, Ark., who I met at the WSOP and saw again in Tunica and here.

She and her husband used to own some businesses in their hometown, but they sold them and she decided to try dealing poker. Mertens trained in Gulfport and dealt at the Isle of Capri Casino in Lula, Miss. (just south of Tunica) for awhile and then decided to try the tournament circuit.

“It’s a tough job because you don’t know what it’s like until you get there,” she said. Like Reno, for example, where the crowds are not very large and there are more than enough dealers.

The 2005 WSOP was Merten’s first big tournament. She said John Bonetti was intimidating.

“He was a mean old man,” she said. “Any dealer can’t say they’re not intimidated when they first walk in.”

Mertens said she misses being away from her husband and her grandkids, though her husband often travels to the tournaments near the end of the affairs for a little R and R.

Although Mertens said it’s tough to live out of a suitcase, but she plans to continue the circuit for another few years. She likes the camaraderie with her fellow dealers and the money is good.

“The advantage of this is you make a lot at one time. What job can you work three weeks on and five weeks off?”

She makes a good point. I wish I could find one of those jobs.

Instead, I’m walking out of the Eldorard on a Tuesday night as Italian blowhard, who finished fifth after losing with a favorite, paces the sidewalk mumbling to himself.

May I never become that guy.

Mark Twain worked as a newspaper reporter in Virginia City as a young man, but he wasn't into molestation (unless it involved a cigar.) 

The so-called "Suicide Table." This faro table allegedly caused the financial downfall of numerous men, who killed themselves afterwards.  

One of the saloons of VC 

Downtown Virginia City, an old mining town where loads of silver were discovered. 

Your hero on the shores of the lake 

Lake Tahoe. It really is quite breathtaking. 

On the way from Reno to Carson City 

There was a St. Patty's Day celebration going on last weekend in front of Fitzgerald's. 

The famous sign 

Sadly, the Horseshoe in Reno is a pawn shop now. 

Another view of good ol' trashy downtown Reno