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Posted by on Jul 7, 2014 in Blog, World Series of Poker | 0 comments

A Big Shout Out to Poker News

 

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If poker is a game of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror, then writing about poker is quite often a seemingly endless monotony interrupted by occasional episodes of exhilaration.

 

The wonderful staff of writers at Poker News do their very best to make the game fun for readers.  I’m constantly marveled at how creative they are in describing what basically amounts to a repeat of cards, hands, and flops that have been seen and reseen many times over.  Nothing is original once you’ve been covering this game for a few years.  You end up seeing it all.  Over and over and over.

What makes the game special, and magical on occasion, are the people and personalities.  Even the bizarre moments can be wildly entertaining to read about.  Consider the following account posted at Poker News, and linked to the coverage at WSOP.com.

There are many writers here who also do some great work.  I wish I had time and space to link to all of those who help to give us different perspectives, as well as a few laughs.  My deepest gratitude to everyone who sacrifices their summer to be here at the Rio in Las Vegas.

The following incident which happened right after the dinner break was written about by two outstanding writer-reporters, Remko Rinkema and Rich Ryan:

7/7/2014 9:24:43 PM PST (about 11 minutes ago)

Table 309 is Missing a Drunk Player

After the 90-minute dinner break, Sean Winter returned to the Purple Section of the Amazon Room a five minutes into Level 4. Upon arriving to his table, he was surprised to find that a very inebriated man was sitting in his assigned seat.

Sean Winter

Hahahaha. Come back from dinner 5 min late and there is a guy super drunk who can’t even talk sitting in my seat.

 

Sean Winter

He said this is my seat I had black guy next to me..next to me is an Asian and a white guy. Lol

 

Sean Winter

He is insisting to the floor my seat is his lol

 

A few members of the WSOP staff ventured over to the table to help the gentleman out, but he didn’t want to leave the table. He was certain that Winter was sitting in his seat. After doing some research, the floor discovered that the player’s name was Michael Nelson, and his original table was no longer in play.

Gulp.

With the help of the staff, Nelson stumbled out of the Purple Section so that their scavenger hunt wouldn’t disturb the other players. Lead Tournament Supervisor Charlie Ciresi started to ask Nelson questions.

“Have you ever seen this room?” he asked Nelson.

“Yes!” he belted. “I’m sitting RIGHT OVER THERE!!!”

His index finger waved in the direction of Table 444 as he mumbled something about his opponents being afraid of him. Without any clues present, Ciresi and his fellow staff members appeared stumped. That’s when ESPN’s Andrew Feldman received a hot tip from Matthew Haugen:

Matthew Haugen

@AFeldmanESPN table 309 is missing a drunk player

 

Ciresi stared at Feldman’s phone, reading the tweet intently. He turned his attention from the mobile device to Feldman, who shrugged.

“OK,” Ciresi said.

He informed Nelson that they were going to move him to the Pavilion Room, and he nodded, hiking up his baggy shorts and sticking an unlit cigarette in his mouth. As he tried to double around and exit the Amazon Room, Nelson started to fall, but thankfully one of our reporters was there to catch him.

“I KNOW EXACTLY WHERE I AM!” Nelson shouted as he trudged down the hallways of the Rio, his unlit cigarette dancing on his lips.

After entering the Pavilion Room, Ciresi turned to Nelson and asked him a familiar question.

“Have you seen this room?”

“YEP!” Nelson blurted.

Pulling his pants up every 90 seconds or so, Nelson slowly made his way to the middle of the Yellow Section in the Amazon Room. When he arrived at Table 309, the eight players at the table were all grinning.

“He would come back with the head of security,” Maurice Hawkins commented.

Nelson took his seat just in time to act out of turn in a raised pot, throwing out a three-bet before Hawkins made his decision. Hawkins opted to call the raise, which meant that Nelson’s bet stood, and the action folded back to the original raiser who called the three-bet. Hawkins put in a reraise, making it 6,000 to go, and both Nelson and the original raiser folded.

Hawkins showed two aces.

Ciresi, who stood by the entire time to make sure that the handoff to the floor person in the Yellow Section went smoothly, stepped in to give Nelson a one-hand penalty. That’s when the table broke.

Even Ciresi had to laugh – Nelson was headed back to the Amazon Room.

With Ciresi, a second floor person, and a security guard in tow, Nelson stumbled all the way out of the Pavilion Room with a bag of chips in one hand, and his shorts in another.

“By the way, Mr. Nelson,” the second floor person told him. “We’re going to have to cut you off.”

“Good,” Nelson mumbled.

Finally, after a total of 30 minutes, Nelson found his new home at Table 378 Seat 1, where the shenanigans continued…

Michael Nelson 34,000 34,000

 

………………..

 

7/7/2014 9:24:49 PM PST (about 16 minutes ago)

Bottoms Up!

A player in the Amazon room is not in full control of all his motor skills at the moment and it’s causing some hilarious situations.

Robert Schmidt profited the most of the situation at hand, as he managed to double up through this man who was unable to locate his own table for about 30 minutes after the dinner break.

In a multi-way pot the flop showed and Schmidt bet 1,400 after which his opponent moved all in immediately. The other players quickly folded and Schmidt called off for a total of 9,725.

Schmidt:
Opponent:

“Yes!” Schmidt’s opponent cheered as if his hand was unbeatable. The turn was the and the man continued, “Boom!”

Schmidt was still in the lead and doubled up when the river brought the .

“Yep!” the player yelled in excitement once more, while the dealer took the chips from his stack needed to pay off Schmidt.

The dealers started dealing the next hand and the player, out of nowhere, lit a cigarette.

“You’re not allowed to smoke in here,” the dealer politely said.

“Oh, sorry,” the player said as he put out the cigarette in the palm of his hand.

The players at the table and around the table could not hold in their laughter and for as long as this player’s in the tournament it will create more and more of these situations. Todd Brunson was at his previous table and he Tweeted the following about it.

Todd Brunson

So a guy just comes back from dinner so drunk, not only he does he not know what table he’s at, but what room either. And he has 80k….

 

Todd Brunson

Funny thing is. Now I really, really wanna drink

 

 

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