What’s In a (Middle) Name?
Thursday, September 17, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
A few years ago I got together with a bunch of college buddies for an impromptu reunion/bender. We spent the days wake-surfing and jet-skiing and the nights playing poker and dramatically reducing our life expectancy through drink. After a marathon sit-n-go that ended around 5AM (I won) we all decided to sit on the dock and watch the sun come up. We set our camp chairs in a circle, put the cooler in the middle, and cracked open our thirtieth beer of the day. Once upon a time these late night (or early morning) bull sessions would center around girls, cars, girls we’d like to…date, profanity-laced comedy routines, and girls we’d…dated and wish we could date again.
But this night was a bit different. We were older now, established, living out some manner of the American Dream. We all had normal, respectable jobs (except for me, maybe). Many of us had loving spouses who cared about us so much they nagged us constantly about our drinking and refused to let us eat bacon for breakfast every morning. We all had mortgages, whose crippling terms left many of us in a financial state resembling indentured servitude. The American Dream.
The conversation ranged over topics from the sublime (Scarlett Johansson or Jessica Alba?) to the ridiculous (the vagaries of auto insurance). We talked about how much our lives had changed from the days when we did our drinking in dorm rooms. Dawn broke, the cooler emptied, and the conversation lagged as exhaustion and Yuengling took their toll. The mood turned philosophical, even a bit melancholy, and then my friend Rick said, “I guess you never know when you get there,” he said. “You never know when you’ve officially ‘made it’. When you’re officially a success.”
“There are signs, mile-markers,” I said. “The corner office. The Benz.”
“When you’re secretary has a secretary, you’ve made it,” said Matt.
“If you have staff, if you have ‘people’, then you’ve gotten somewhere,” agreed Scott. And the conversation revived as we started coming up with more and more ridiculous, petty, narcissistic ways of showing the world that you’ve clawed your way to the top of the pyramid.
“You appear on the cover of People magazine.”
“Screw People. Time magazine.”
“They’re basically the same thing. Nah, you’ve made it when you have a perfume named after you.”
“Yes. If you have your own frickin’ fragrance, then you’ve made it.”
“Even for a dude?”
“Especially for a dude.”
“No no,” I said, crushing yet another hollowed-out can, “you know you’ve made it when the house you grew up in becomes a National Landmark. Where there’s a plaque on the wall and people buy AAA maps to find out how to get there.”
“That’s not bad,” Matt said.
Yeah…not bad at all. I like the idea of some historian recreating my bedroom in precise detail, of some guy in a Smokey-the-Bear hat leading a tour and saying, “This, ladies and gentleman, this is where Gene Bromberg slept (pause for the popping of flashbulbs). Here’s the quilt his mother made for him when he was ten…and here (lifting the mattress) is where he used to hide his illicit copies of Playboy magazine…” My goodness, that’d be AWESOME.
The sun creased the horizon and the brilliant light felt like needles boring into my skull. We decided to adjourn for the night morning but before we left Matt said, “Know how you can tell when you’ve screwed up in life? I mean, REALLY screwed up??” There was a pause and then he said, “When people refer to you by your entire name, middle name included. ‘Lee Harvey Oswald’. ‘John Wilkes Booth’”.
“Mark David Chapman,” Scott said. “Yeah, when the media is reporting your entire name so they don’t get sued for libel by people with the same name, you effed up bigtime.”
“John Wayne Gacy.”
“James Earl Ray.”
“George W. Bush,” I said. Eyes rolled and I said, “Hey, you don’t think his dad was calling reporters and insisting they use the “W” to make sure people didn’t confuse the son with the father??” There was some shrugging and, with that, we all staggered to bed.
Middle names are like the middle child–often ignored. We all have enough names to keep track in our heads without adding words to the string. Middle names look nice on a wedding invitation, they add girth to a monogram, but beyond that they’re somewhat superfluous. Unless you wanted to play in last night’s Twitter freeroll here on UltimateBet. With our freerolls we’ve been trying to have a bit of fun with our followers, instead of just tweeting the password and having the Twitterhordes descend en masse we’ve tried to engage in some educational games (hopefully that isn’t an oxymoron). This time around a clue to the password was given out in advance–it was the middle name of one of our pros. That gave those with too much free time to build a dossier on the complete Team UltimateBet roster, before it was revealed that the player in question was one Phil Hellmuth Jr.
For some reason I thought I knew Phil’s middle name, I thought maybe Norman Chad had taunted Phil using his full name once on ESPN or maybe I’d written something using his complete moniker. But as the freeroll grew close and people started tweeting in desperation for the info I just couldn’t come up with it. I decided to see what Wikipedia had to say on the subject. And learned that Phil Hellmuth’s middle name is…Jerome. Huh. You could’ve given me a thousand guesses and I wouldn’t have gotten that. And here’s a bit of trivia that I at least found interesting–when Phil Ivey started out playing poker in Atlantic City he had a fake ID that gave his name as…Jerome. He was actually nicknamed “No Home Jerome”. Synchronicity at work.
Anyway, to the tables! We had an even 500 players in last night’s freeroll, with the top 21 adding a bit of money to their purse. First prize was a ticket to Sunday’s $200,000 Guaranteed tournament–still waiting for a freeroller to win that tourney so I could write up a kicking post about it. Get crackin’, folks.
There was some man-on-man action as we approached the money bubble, but it was the unfortunate BIRD_MAN13 who missed the money and the aptly-named LUCKY-MAN who squeaked into a $2.12 cash. Once the bubble burst the field quickly boiled down (though not as quickly as some of our previous freerolls) and soon we were down to ten players battling for the nine spots at our final table. It looked all but certain that ATOMICTOM would be the odd man out as he had just a few chips and some lint sitting in front of him, but he doubled up once to reconnect his life support machine and then he played a hand that I thought was a bit odd at the time. It was folded around, MIKEYYY44805 (try saying that three times fast) raised and ATOMICTOM, sitting in the big blind, went into the tank. Now, it was odd it took so long for him to call because he only had like a few hundred left–he pretty much HAD to call, with anything. Seriously, even if he’d only been dealt one card and a Saltine he’d have to call. Eventually he did and turned over…Ad-Qs. Which is a stupendous hand when you’re in the big blind and down to nothing. MIKEYYY44805 called and showed a dominated As-Js, but he flopped a gutshot draw that hit on the turn and sent ATOMICTOM to the rail.
“Aha!” I said. “Karma! Slow-rollin’ your big hand and the Poker Gods did smite you!” However, my analysis might’ve been a bit hasty. First of all, it’s possible that ATOMICTOM was just having a little connection problem and that was the reason his call was tardy. Second, after his elimination the final table popped up and…there were only eight players seated. It turns out that NICKIONE, sitting at the other table, was eliminated just seconds before ATOMICTOM and actually ended up in 10th place, missing the final table. I thought we were playing hand-for-hand but it’s possible there was an overlap and that ATOMICTOM had the clarity of thought to check out the other table, see what was going down, and pause to witness poor NICKIONE’s fate. Only after seeing that his rival had been sent to the rail did ATOMICTOM make what proved to be his final call. If that’s what went down, I simply must applaud ATOMICTOM’s cool head and icicled heart. Maybe he never took a seat at the final table, but he made it, and boosted his winnings by 40% by thinking before he acted. Well done.
For much of the tournament CHI_SOX27 was the chipleader, but he was the first at this abbreviated final table to go busto when, after seeing his stack eclipsed, he made a move with J-10 and ran into the pocket Kings of DIRTYCHECKNO. A player who never really built up a big stack was MIKEDEPIETRO, who bobbed and weaved his way deep into the tournament while engaging many of his opponents in the talking of the smack. The big stacks were liberally attacking the blinds of the shorter players and MIKE didn’t like that too much. At one point he challenged about half the table to play a heads-up match for any stakes they wanted…a brief aside here–wouldn’t a TV show called HU4ROLLZ!! be a ratings smash? Get angry people to liquidate all their assets, bring the cash to the studio and play heads-up against their mutual tormentor. It’d be awesome.
Anyway, MIKEDEPIETRO tripled up once when he flopped an Ace in a four-way pot and that was enough to ensure his survival. The banter grew a bit more good-humored as JERSEYLOVE27 and MR FRANK MO each built up massive stacks, and then JERSEYLOVE27 went on a three-hand rampage that liquidated half the table. On consecutive hands JERSEY eliminated MIKEYYY44805 when the latter’s A-4 ran into the former’s pocket Aces; eliminated MIKEDEPIETRO when JERSEY’S K-10 out-turned MIKE’s A-J; and then crusherated the very short KWARK’s J-3 with A-7 (the Ace on the flop all but sealed the deal).
We were three-handed but DIRTYCHECKNO had a microstack compared to the big boys. It looked like he might get a much-needed double-up when his A-7 had MR FRANK MO’s A-4 dominated, but the board double-paired, both Aces played, and a pot DIRTYCHECKNO desperately needed was chopped up. A few hands later he shoved with 8-10 and was called by JERSEYLOVER’s A-9, and after a no-help flop DIRTY turned an eight and again looked set to double up. But no–the river cruelly brought an Ace, the pot was shipped to JERSEY, and we were heads-up.
JERSEYLOVER27 had about a 70,000 chip lead over MR FRANK MO, so the match was still very much up for grabs. JERSEY extended that to a nearly 2-1 advantage until a hand where his pocket Jacks were outflopped by FRANK’s Qd-8d. The money went in after that Queen-high flop and the tables were turned 180 degrees in FRANK’s favor. He extended his lead until calling a preflop re-raise and then folding to a JERSEY shove on an As-Qh-4d flop that brought JERSEY back into contention. He chipped up, chipped up, finally taking a small lead that he extended when he won a big pot with a hefty raise on the river that chased FRANK. The end came on the very next hand, as the two traded raises after a 5h-7d-8c flop. FRANK flopped top pair with 8h-10s, but JERSEY hit top two holding 7s-8s and when the board blanked out the victory, and a ticket for the $200,000 Sunday Guaranteed tournament, went to JERSEYLOVE27. While MR FRANK MO saw a tidy $49.23 go into his account…huh, “MR FRANK MO”. First name, middle name, last name. I wonder terrible thing he did…
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