Monday, November 2, 2009 - Joe Sebok
What’s up UB?! Hope that all are doing well and life is nothing but good out there. I have tried to play more and more on the site recently, had a couple of winning small sessions playing the $1-$2 game, and then got my ass kicked pretty good one day as well. I just like sitting around with ya’ll and chatting it up as well, so that has been more my focus with playing on the site so far. Seems I haven’t had enough time to really get serious with the cash game playing much, which explains the small stakes. I’ve played the Sunday $200k as well a few times, but haven’t managed to get anything going there at all. I’ll have to check with Cantu about how he does it. That fool seems to win a UB tournament every other week. Wtf? How is he pulling this off? Big wowzers…
I’m writing from Miami airport, on yet another business trip out of the country. I swear, you would think I was more important with all of these trips I am taking all the time. Haha. One this is sickly for sure: I am racking up mad frequent flyer miles. 
Just flew here from Vegas this morning, where I had just finished up taping my very first episode of “Poker After Dark”…but hopefully not my last. I always think I talk so much more than other poker players that they will want my ass on those shows. We’ll see if this inaugural Seebs episode sparks them to bring me back. I can always hope. My lineup featured Howard Lederer, Ali Nejad, Gabe Kaplan, Mark Gregorich, and Kara Scott and the theme was media-based. Was a total blast. You’ll have to wait for it to air to see who won though.
It’s unbelievable that the WSOP final table is just around the corner, and by corner I mean next weekend. I am sickly excited and am obviously pulling for Phil to work some magic and somehow take down that title. It’s hard for me to see anyone disputing that he is the best that has ever played if he can win that bracelet. I think he will have moved solidly past Chip and Doyle for all around dominance with a win there, and that’s to say nothing of his online game, where he crushes too. The dude is a total machine.
Speaking of the final table, be looking for me to do some commentating on the Bluff show that UB is sponsoring. Should be a blast and I’m excited about it. We’ll also be recording some “PokerRoad Radio” episodes as well, so be looking for those. Basically, it’s going to be a seriously busy weekend in Las Vegas coming up. I’ll also have a pretty big announcement that we are going to be letting out of the bag during next weekend as well, so be paying attention for that.
All of you be good, and I’ll holler at you soon!
peace,
J
Tags: Ali Nejad, bluff, Brandon Cantu, gabe kaplan, Howard Lederer, Kara Scott, Mark Gregorich, Online Poker, Phil Hellmuth, Poker After Dark, Poker Poker Poker, Poker Road Radio, tournaments, ub, Vegas, WSOP
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Monday, June 22, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
In the Amazon Room the restart area is the Green section, tucked up against the ESPN Final Table stage. In years past that’s where Day 2 of many tournaments would play down, in part because it’s fairly small and because it allows for more fans to crowd close and watch their friends and favorites play for a final table.
This year the Green section has gotten even crazier because of the new rule halting Day 2 play at 3AM. Because now we’re seeing a lot of Day 3 action there, and at times there are TWO separate events playing there at the same time. That’s the case today, as the $1,500 No-Limit Hold-Em event and the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha World Championship play down to their final tables. I’m guessing that when they reach the final nine the PLO event will go to the main ESPN Feature Table and the Hold-Em event will move to the secondary feature table.
But for now, it’s totally insane over there. You have the players packed in tight at four tables, spectators pressing close on three sides (and watching from above on the elevated stage) and then you have the dozens of media types (like me) milling around trying to catch the action. I literally had to wait in line to get a picture of Brandon Cantu, whose stack has see-sawed so violently today that I’m almost afraid to post updates. He’s down to a few hundred thousand…he’s the chip leader. He doubled someone up…he doubled up himself. According to the most recent chip-counts he’s in second place with 1.5 million…but give it a minute, that’s likely to change. Dramatically.
Matt Graham has also been at or near the chip lead of the $10,000 PLO World Championship most of the day (he’s top dog as I write this). The field could accurately be described as “sick”, with Barry Greenstein, Chau Giang, Josh Arieh, Vitaly Lunkin, and Richard Austin (who won a bracelet last week in the $5K PLO) still in the hunt. One player who was in the hunt, but is no longer, is Howard Lederer, who was seated next to Matt and was just eliminated in 12th place.
There are 11 players left in the PLO, 14 in the Hold-Em. Another hour or two and each event will adjourn to a feature table, where those left standing will play for the bracelet. Gonna be a long night.
Tags: 2009 world series of poker, 2009 wsop, Brandon Cantu, Howard Lederer, Matt Graham, WSOP
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Saturday, April 4, 2009 - Phil Hellmuth
Y’all would be surprised—somewhat anyway—at all of the crazy bets that are made amongst the high stakes poker players. I’ve decided to write about just some of these fun bets.
“Chip” Reese betting Yosh Nakano $5,000 on whose bag would come up first at the baggage claim belt in Australia—Chip won. Mike Matusow betting me $10,000 on the position of Robert Varkonyi when he played a huge pot with John Shipley, where Varkonyi’s J-J was up against Shipley’s A-J at the 2002 World Series of Poker’s (WSOP) final table; Matusow bet they were on the button, and in the small blind, and Mike was right for $10,000 of my money!
Huck Seed betting me $10,000 that he could float in any “body of water” for 24 hours; Huck was allowed to wear a wetsuit. Huck lost, but I hear that he may have won the bet had he tried to do it in the Dead Sea. Huck flying to Madison, Wis. to play me nine-ball for $2,000 a game in my basement, on my beautiful Italian cloth pool table; I lost $24,000 in one night. Me betting Yosh Nakano on the Academy Awards in 1992 or so (the year that Marissa Tomei won best supporting actress for “My Cousin Vinny”), and losing $12,000 in the process; although I did win the first $2,000 bet of the night when Tomei won!
A group of player’s, who shall remain nameless, that bet $10,000 a “prop” while they play $80-$160 Hold’em at UltimateBet! Doyle Brunson and Mike Sexton scrambling vs. Huck Seed and Howard Lederer scrambling for $80,000 NASA (five ways) at TPC Summerlin; Brunson and Sexton were playing the red tees and Lederer and Seed the blue tees.
According to Doyle, he and Sexton were huge favorites in the match, hitting irons into every par five, and flip wedges into every par four. Even still, Doyle says Huck and Howard played like “supermen” and were ahead on the number sixteen green, staring at a short birdie putt to lock in to a big win when Doyle knocked in a fifty-footer for a birdie for his team. Now Howard (Bub) and Huck, to their credit, still made their putt. However, the Bub/Huck team then proceeded to implode with bogies on holes 17 and 18 to lose $160,000, when pars on those two last holes would have won them at least $160,000.
In August 1999, I bet Tiger Woods to win at 6 to 1 odds against Bill Gazes, for $1,000 a bet: luckily, I bet it three weeks in a row and won $18,000–go Tiger go! A couple of years back, I bet Curtis Bibb that David Duval would win at 12 to 1 odds after Duval was 10 strokes back going into the weekend. I checked the scores on Saturday night and gave up all hope, only to find out that Duval shot 59 on Sunday to win.
Mike Matusow and I betting $5,000 on the position I was in during a hand at the 2003 WSOP with 27 players left. Only thing was, we bet one week after the fact, and I hadn’t slept all week because the hand haunted me; not to mention that I had just finished writing an article about the hand. Of course Mike lost that one, but he figured it out in time to not lose $10,000—I was in the process of kicking up the bet when it dawned on him that he’d lost!
David Grey betting Doyle $10,000 a tournament on last longer bets at the WSOP a couple years back; Doyle won the first eight bets.
Then there’s Amarillo Slim’s classic bet where he bet several gentleman $38,000 (a ton of money at the time) that he could hit a golf ball at least one mile. By the way, Slim’s book, “Amarillo Slim in a World full of Fat people” is really excellent! The ground rules were set; the ball had to go one mile, but not downhill, he couldn’t hit it off of a mountain, he couldn’t hit it out of an airplane, he couldn’t hit it into a moving boxcar, in fact there were three pages of legal paper filled with conditions. So Slim went out to a frozen lake in the dead of winter, and teed it up downwind! Two of the now chagrined gentleman followed the bright-orange-colored-ball with power cat snowmobiles for about a mile and a half. But this ball, under these conditions, was like the energizer bunny; still going!
Finally, I want to mention Doyle Brunson’s bet (getting laid some odds), where he won one million dollars from Lyle Berman, Chip Reese and Bobby Baldwin for a weight bet that ended at the 2003 WSOP! Congrats Doyle, you look great as always!
Tags: Academy Awards, Amarillo Slim, Chip Reese, doyle brunson, Howard Lederer, Huck Seed, Mike Matusow, mike sexton, Tiger Woods, WSOP
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Monday, February 9, 2009 - Annie Duke
Okay…here is something that sucks. My friends Rafe and Laura are getting married on March down in Mexico. I have had this on my schedule for months and months now because they are really dear friends. I mean if I had to list the people that I would want to make sure I went to their wedding they are pretty near the top of the list. So they looked through the poker schedule since, after all, so many of Rafe Furst’s friends are poker players. And they saw that there was a hole right at the beginning of March and they let us all know to save the date, which Joe and I did immediately.
Oh shit, the beginning of March? Don’t you worry about that, we all find out a few weeks ago that that is when the NBC Heads Up Challenge is. That, of course, affects not just me but my brother, Howard Lederer, Andy Bloch, Chris Ferguson and a few others. I mean how much does that suck because of any tournament in the world that is one we cannot miss. I have to play in it. I would miss a WPT (as long as it wasn’t the $25K Championship). I might even miss a few of the preliminary WSOP events. But I can’t miss the NBC event. It is just too important to be there and it would be irresponsible of me to miss it.
So now I am really sad…not just for me since I am going to miss the wedding…but more so for Rafe and Laura because so many of their close friends can’t make the wedding now and that just sucks. I miss a cool Mexican vacation but they miss their friends being there on one of the most important days of their lives.
When poker is your job it sometimes gets in the way of the other stuff in you life and that is just the way it is. Sigh.
Tags: $25K Championship, Andy Bloch, Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer, NBC Heads up Challenge, WPT
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