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Jesse May in
Las Vegas |
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T minus 3 update
Main event update. When the rumor
came through this morning that 2200 players are already confirmed for the main
event, I went to the source, tournament director Matt Savage. He would neither
confirm nor deny it, but did offer this. “I can confidently say that we
will have at least 2000 runners.” Wow. At least 2000. And apparently
twenty more tables are already on special order so that the Horseshoe can
accommodate more. Is 2500 out of the question? It seems like the only outer
limit now is how many gamblers in the world can get the weekend
off.
It’s early Thursday afternoon in the temporary center of the
world, and it feels like the epicenter of an earthquake. The line for the $225
super satellite for the main event yawns and jaws with long legions of hopers,
stretching past the buffet. The $3000 no limit Hold’em is back in swing
down to the last 23 players. And the $5000 pot limit Omaha event has just ended
its rebuy period, with bundles of bills flying like confetti as Jodi Ivener
struggles to parcel out yellow thousand chips to every player and his mother.
It’s a mad scene.
Let’s take the Omaha event first. The pot
limit Omaha event is the game for sure where the Europeans have the edge. No
matter how many good old boys from Mississippi and New Orleans profess
different, they haven’t been playing the game as long as the Brits, who
have every one of them cu their teeth on Omaha cash games. A Tunica fellow
wearing a Big Bob’s Seafood House T-shirt comes over to the rail and calls
over his man. “Brett!” he says in a strong southern accent. “You
get over to my room and get ten thousand from the safe. Hell, I don’t need
it now, but just go get it!”
This tournament plays big. The rules
say that you can rebuy anytime you have 5000 or less in chips, so players have
the option of doing a double buy-in at the start or anytime they go broke. This
makes the event five thousand buy-in, or ten grand if you’d rather. And
many of the players are buying ten at a time. I was trying to count out who had
the most pull-ups but soon gave up in the flurry of bills and chips. One Afghan
fellow was in for 35,000 already. Chris Ferguson played the last hand of the
second level, went broke, and immediately threw out three $5000 chips. Double
rebuy plus the add-on. Julian Gardner had worked hard for two hours to triple
his stack and now found the big wallets at the table even or past him.
The big pot limit Omaha game at the Vic in London is the breeding
ground for the terrors of this game, and they are out here in force. Like
Surinder Sunar, who sat down as an alternate one hour late, or
“Choirboy” Gary Jones, Donnacha O’dea and Robin Keston sitting
in a line as a murderer’s row. Tony Bloom and the always dangerous Jeff
Duval are also chipped up, and Irishman George McKeever, who placed 7th in the
main event in 1999. Never leave out the Devilfish, who’s in a crisp custom
shirt with starched cuffs at the end of long blue sleeves, and is in some
circles regarded as the most dangerous in the world.
But maybe the
Americans know how to pound these rebuy events. Phil Hellmuth himself has
35,000 after the first break, and Daniel Negreanu’s not far behind. About
twenty minutes in Negreanu shouts over to Allen Cunningham, “Allen did you
bring much money? I didn’t, I was too scared!” Negreanu’s making
fun of the fact that he had 27 rebuys in the last rebuy event, and maybe the
fact that PL Omaha’s not his best game. But Ted Forrest has the faster
retort, he looks dead on at Daniel with his expression dry as tinder and says,
“Don’t worry, Daniel. I’ve got some money for you.”
He’s sitting at Daniel’s table. The place breaks up
laughing.
The American with the strongest results in Omaha events is
Texas man Robert Williamson III, or as one European calls him, Robert
Williamson number one and a half, because the former big man has shed over two
hundred pounds in no time at all. Williamson is chip leader at his table in the
early going, headphones have him banging to the beat and frequent big bets.
Why do the Europeans fancy their chances in Omaha? It might have to do
with, as one European puts it, the ace players. Too many Americans raise with
aces, he says, and call with everything else. In Europe they specialize in ace
cracking, cracking those fellows who think two aces is worth anything. Pot
Limit Omaha is more about gambling. Knowing when to gamble and betting on the
draw. And never making the hand until the last card is dealt. And the Europeans
like that.
But the weirdest story right now is one John Juanda. How
surprised was the room when they saw him in the Omaha event, sipping his coffee
at 12:35 and peeping at four cards. Surprised, because Juanda was scheduled to
start the last three tables of the No Limit Hold’em at 2pm, and with
50,000 in chips and half a million for first, you’d have to figure he
liked his chances. Ted Forrest complained from one table over. He’d put
Juanda first on his fantasy pool team and was far more interested in John
making some points at the final table rather then wasting his focus on the four
card game. Maybe Juanda’s theory was to be aggressive early on in the No
Limit, go big or go home, and when they finally did kick off the last 25 at 2pm
that seemed to be the story because Juanda went to war, playing and raising
several pots right off the bat. He immediately built his stack to 85,000, and I
have to figure that’s the end of the Omaha for him. Weird, though. Weird.
It’s also possible that people are losing their marbles. Tomorrow
we’ll talk about players to watch, and one of them might be Paul Phillips.
He hung around forever yesterday with no chips at all, and in the last hour of
the NL Hold’em last night, the thirteenth level, when bats and cuckoos
came out to roost, Phillips zoomed near the chip lead, to over one hundred
grand. To have gas in your engines come three am is quite strong indeed, and
when I asked him about it this morning his comment was, “Yeah. And I
didn’t even need to get lucky. Just stole and stole.” That’s
good.
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