Today I found out that I've been switched to the day shift, so my shifts are now 11AM-7PM, which is awesome! My off days were Sunday and Wednesday, but I needed Saturday off to go to Sean's wedding. I can't miss it; I'm the best man! Almost everybody is working Saturday, so finding somebody off was going to be a job in itself. The good news is that I eventually found a guy who wanted to work Saturday and needs Wednesday off, so that works perfectly. The only difference is that I work at 9:30AM on Wednesday instead of 11.
Getting that squared away took a long time and I thought I had missed the Moneymaker v. Farha matchup of the WSOP grudge matches. But when I walked up to the huge stage in the Amazon Room, which looks like a UFO by the way, it was empty. I walked outside and was walking behind a guy and his wife toward the bathroom. He turned to go into the bathroom and I saw that it was Chris Moneymaker! He was still in the bathroom when I came out so I asked his wife if Chris was playing Sammy in the UFO. She looked pretty confused for a minute, but she realized what I meant and said yes, so I went back to the UFO to wait.
I sat down behind Patrik Antonius and asked him who had won the earlier match between Chan and Hellmuth. He said that he didn't know and took a phone call right after answering me. I wonder if he was actually talking to anybody or just wanted me not to bother him.
Anyway, he left soon afterwards to stand with Gus Hansen, Tom Dwan, and Bobby Baldwin as they announced that the 2012 WSOP will contain a $1,000,000 buy-in event that they are planning to play in. Apparently Tony G, Daniel Negreanu, and Andy Beal are all playing in it as well. Crazy that anybody can risk that much money playing in a poker tournament!
A few minutes later, after I had moved into the front row, a middle aged man sat down on my left. Turns out, he is a longtime buddy of Sam Farha. We struck up a conversation about Farha. His buddy said that Sammy had a complete disregard for money, which makes sense at the stakes he plays. Sammy has been a multi-millionaire, broke, and back up again at least twenty times. Also, I knew that Chris Moneymaker had offered to split the money before their heads-up match commenced in 2003 and that Sammy turned it down. His buddy told me that Sammy turned it down partly because he was $1.2M down at blackjack and he wanted a larger profit.
I was fairly indifferent to who won the first match of the 2-out-of-3, but I was pulling a bit for Moneymaker since he started with the chip lead. I thought that if Sammy won the first match, it might be a landslide. Sammy got all-in in the first match with A-10 against Chris' A-8, but Chris hit an 8 on the turn to win it. I walked out to go to the bathroom and ended up walking with Farha. He seemed pretty put out (obviously). I told him that he played it perfectly, Chris got lucky, and since he had the chiplead for Round 2, this round was his. Sammy replied that he was happy with his play so far, then turned to me with a smile and said thanks.
Sammy outplayed Chris badly in Round 2, but lost the chiplead when Chris called his all-in w/ A-J on a K-6-6 flop. Sammy had 9-4 for a bare flush draw and missed, but the call was pretty bad. Sammy came over and told his buddy, "Eight years later and he still plays bad! He's so smart, he says he put me on a flush draw. If I have two live cards and a flush draw, I'm a favorite." He was pretty irritated and his buddy and I told him to keep outplaying Chris and the cards will turn around. Sammy took the chiplead back and ended up shoving A-7 on a 7-6-6 flop against Chris' 8-8. He hit an A on the river to win round two and finally get lucky against Chris.
In round three they started with equal stacks and Sammy took a significant chiplead again. He simply was winning the big pots and losing the more frequent, but much smaller pots. Then they got all-in on a flop of J-10-2. Sammy had J-10 and Chris had J-2 for an inferior two pair. Unbelievably, a 2 hit the river to double Chris into a large chiplead. Chris took it down a while later and Sammy came over again and said that he was happy because he'd played well. So that whole experience was pretty surreal.
Today I dealt the $1,500 Limit Hold 'em tournament and I dealt to Daniel Negreanu, Ted Forrest, Jennifer Harman, 'Minneapolis' Jim Meehan, and a couple of other players that I've seen before, but couldn't name. I was feeling a lot more confident and only made a couple of small, inconsequential mistakes all day. At Daniel's table, he was talking to Jim Meehan about golf courses in the area and Meehan told him about a course that he likes. Daniel replied that it was too windy. Jim said that he liked that because it was usually about ten degrees cooler there. Daniel said that he doesn't like the cold. I couldn't resist it and said, "I thought you were from Canada." Daniel looked up at me and said, "That's why I left!" It was pretty funny.
I'm flying home in a few hours to go to my buddy Sean's wedding with Jess so I better get some sleep.
Best entry yet!
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