Gambling Today

As we arrived at the Amazon Room this afternoon the pot limit Omaha event, which started yesterday, was getting underway. In it played three Team PokerStars hopefuls in Humberto Brenes, Noah Boeken and Bill Chen.

As reported earlier, in a period of carnage lasting about 15 minutes, the landscape of the event was changed as all three pros disappeared, busted one after the other. Humberto, who began as one of the short stacks, was busted by a rivered straight and Noah went rail bound in the same way.

But Bill Chen? Bill disappeared amidst the wreckage of what once was as many were still picking up the pieces of the hands that had been so costly. Would we ever know what happened?

Of course we would. The PokerStars video blog team caught up with Bill later for a full on debrief and a detailed rundown of what happened…

Watch WSOP: Bill Chen’s PLO Post Mortem on PokerStars.tv

The name of this tournament — $50,000 HORSE — is something like a reporter’s dream. Equine puns abound on media row: saddle up, giddy up, go.

But if we think about it for a moment, the horse-race analogy is not especially appropriate. Far from being a grunting, thunderous sprint to the finish line from scarcely restrained beasts, the structure and the nature of this tournament makes it more akin to a slow race across a desert between heavily-armoured tanks. Occasionally one of them will veer sideways and bump into their neighbour, chipping the paintwork and edging ahead, and eventually the landscape will be strewn with blazing shells, bent and busted and buckled. Only one will trundle on.

At the end of today, day two of what is scheduled to be a five-day event, there will probably be about 50 metallic carcasses laid to waste across the desert of the Amazon Ballroom. Only eight perished on day one, but the heat is greater today and some are already battle-weary from yesterday’s travails. In such testing circumstances, being part of a team is undoubtedly a good policy, and it certainly worked for Team PokerStars Pro. Of the eight members that started yesterday — Isabelle Mercier, Barry Greenstein, Daniel Negreanu, Greg Raymer, Dario Minieri, Katja Thater, Chad Brown and Bill Chen — all eight return today, all with chips.

The strongest at this point is the latter of those, Bill Chen, who finished the opening day with 182,500, an 82.5 percent profit on his opening stack. Known for the mathematical precision that earned him two bracelets in 2005 and underpins his highly-regarded poker book “The Mathematics of Poker”, Chen is something of a walking calculator, knowing just about all there is to know about the economics and the value aspects of the game.

Today, for instance, the tournament director had given the returning players a two-minute and then a one-minute warning to take their seats before play would start without them. With about 30 seconds to go, Chen arrived, ripped open his chip bag, and stacked just in time for the first hand. Why get here any earlier?

“It was pretty good,” he told me, referring to yesterday’s play. “There was a lot of action on our table. I played a lot of pots, won most of them, lost a few of them. I’m pretty happy.”

It sounds like a winning formula.

“There’s not much tournament strategy at play yet,” he went on. “So this is just like a ring game. I’m pretty happy in all the variants. I think I have a World Series cash in pretty much all of them, so I don’t mind what we play.

Understated and focused; calculating yet innovative. Chen is well-equipped to take a long run at this one. Or a gallop.

I am a hopeful person. I am optimistic to a fault. Ever in search of a good story, I pin my writing dreams on the skill and fortune of a select group of poker professionals. They spend their days trying to fade 13 twice, and I spend my days hoping they succeed. There are days like today that have such interminable promise that it’s almost impossible to suggest that at least some fine story won’t spring from the Amazon Room fountain.

It’s days like today that I can simply mutter, “Oh, well.”

As if to put a period on all of it, I walked up on Victor Ramdin as he got AQ in against AK in the today’s $1,500 NL event. The flop brought an ace. Victor got up to leave. The turn brought a queen.

“Hey, look,” I said. “A queen.”

The river brought a king.

My attentions had diverted form the 2-7 event Victor was in also, so I said, “Oh, well. How are you doing in the other one?”

Victor gave me a look that made me wish I was somewhere else.

“Terrible,” he said. “I’m out.”

Victor Ramdin

Victor was gone before I had a chance to apologize for being the cooler. Eventually these guys will catch on and banish me from their presence during key hands.

After starting with an exceptionally good chance at some big cash today, we are left at this hour with the prospects of just one player. At the dinner break, Bill Chen remains in the Limit 2-7 Triple Draw re-buy event.

With 28 players remaining, Bill has an average stack and is just a few players off the money. Six of those players will make the final table, scheduled to be played tomorrow.

A quick story for 2-7 players on the spooky game Bill is playing: Before the dinner break, he stood pat with 7744x and bet in every round, figuring he was holding cards his opponent needed to draw. After his opponent drew at every opportunity, Bill took down the hand after his opponent ended up mucking the worthless straight he drew.

Or, at least, that’s how I heard the story.

Bill Chen

I supposed if I’m going to pin my hopes on anything, it might as well be a guy who wrote the book “Mathematics of Poker.” Otherwise, it’s early to bed and early to rise for tomorrow’s gambler’s ball–$10,000 PLO re-buys.

That’s bound to be a good day.