Gary Wise from Las Vegas

I know I suck, but at least I’m back

Posted by admin on Jul 21, 2010

Title says it all. Some personal problems and an increase in responsibilities took me away from blogging for a bit, but I’m going to try to do better. Blah, I know, you’ve heard that before, but it is what it is. A fvw random collected thoughts:

- number one worst thing about the Seniors event: everyone arrives in their own car. I had to park at the Paris because there were no closer parking spots.

- My favorite quote from WSOP ever; a year ago, I was walking down a nearly abandoned hallway whose only other occupant was a shrivelled octegenarian. As I walked towards him, he uncorked his cell phone, dialed a number, put the phone to his ear, waited for an answer and then exclaimed “Honey! I’m still alive!” I love gallows humor.

- David Benyamine is looking like a real force for Player of the Year. he just took his first ever bracelet, giving him his third final table of the series and he’s planning on playing every event he can from here on out. Right now, the only guy who’s even close is Jacobo Hernandez, pretty amazing considering Jacobo hasn’t take a bracelet yet.

Freezing My Ass Off at the Bottom of the World

Posted by admin on Aug 8, 2008

If you’d told me on any day this year except this one that on the 7th of August, I’d be wearing a toque and a sweater, drinking my coffee black and still be freezing my ass off, I’d have laughed in your face. I’m a proud Canadian. As such, I should be impervious to the rigors of cold, especially at a time of year where over-ambitious air conditioning should be the only means through which frigid temperatures might be applied, am I right?

Incorrect.

Funny things happen to those pre-formed notions when you’re sitting at the bottom of the world. I’m a ten minute drive from Punta del Este, a small Ocean-side city in Uruguay. That’s Uruguay, as in ‘Uruguay is south of the equator’, covering a Latin American Poker Tour for PokerStars and ESPN. If it didn’t occur to you that it’s wintertime south of the equator, I wouldn’t be too ashamed. I forgot myself until I received an e-mail a few hours before departure advising ‘bring a sweater.’ It’s apparent now that long johns, scarf, mittens, snow shoes, electric blanket, turtlenecks and marshmallows for the open flame that I’m aspiring to find now would have been in order.

That’s right. You just read two paragraphs dedicated to my freezing my ass off. If Reinaldo Venegas –editor of Bluff en Espanol– hadn’t given me a hat to maintain some kind of body heat, I might not have managed even that much.

This is an unusual situation I’m in here. Punta del Este is one of South America’s most popular vacation spots from December to March, those months in which you couldn’t freeze magma here. In the off months, the city is more or less deserted, just one of the reasons Uruguay was so pleased to have Stars contribute to their August travel and tourism industry. Aside from the 400 poker players, ‘Stars staff and assembled media, the place is more or less deserted. We’re running amuck.

With the locals abandoning the area for warmer climes, there isn’t too much to do here. There’s a small casino, but playing poker there isn’t much of an option. The rake is 5% with no maximum, a fact that really hits you between the eyes when you see $120 raked from a single pot. The caliber of play in those games is low enough that it’s almost worth the fight against the house, except that the folks dealing the cards don’t know the game and watching them pass pots to the wrong player or take ten minutes to take that three-figure rake or deal 15 hands an hour is entirely tilt-inducing. I figured that out while getting rivered on a $2,500 pot last night*. For the players, the state of the cash games are extra incentive to dominate in the tournament.

* OK, let me say here that I’m very good at taking my beats. In this particular hand, I got all-in on the turn with the board A-5-10 Q while holding A-5 to my opponent’s A-K (and an all-in player’s K-10) only to get rivered by a king. I’m pretty sure I’d have been fine if the dealer didn’t literally take seven minutes to deal that river card, then try to pass me the pot after doing so. Throw in the ironic habit they have of yelling “professionalis!” after every tip. Even I have my limits…I got up.**

** Special thanks to uber-blogger Joe Posnanski, whose work inspired my use of the asterisk here.

The LAPT itself is proving a great success. The room was filled to capacity and then some to start the day. All manner of Latin American celebrities are here along with Humberto Brenes, Barry Greenstein, Greg Raymer, Brandon Cantu and a host of others. These folks are friends of mine, or at least friendlies (write enoug nice things about someone and they’re bound to like you on some level), but it’s nice to get a chance to see them outside the chaos of a WSOP or WPT. For them, a little $2,500 tournament is a nice excuse for a getaway and good times. It has a humanizing effect. Many good meals are bound to come.

The correlation between the pot size and the tournament entry definitely got me thinking. It’s been a good few weeks, with my poker profits somewhere in the $7,000 range, enough to show me that I’ve been learning through watching admidst my absence from the tables. I felt like a superior player in that game last night, yet here i sit on the sidelines while the faces from around that table play poker with the pros. Of course, in a couple of weeks, I’ll have hit a cold streak and will realize it was a ridiculous notion in the first place. Right?

“Good for poker.”

Posted by admin on Jun 4, 2008

Man, I wanted Chris Ferguson to win tonight.

Amongst the people I’ve been having interesting conversations with at WSOP is Dr. Pauly Mcquire, the twisted, dark, friendly and wise author of what many consider poker’s best regular blog, the Tao of Poker and Dan Michalski, owner of pokerati. Both have mentioned to me their disdain for the term “Good for poker”.

I think a part of the boys’ logic stems from a similar theory to one I have about the establishment of poker as a pastime and the underatanding that games and industries will have their scandals. Referee Tim Donaghy bet on games he officiated and life went on for the NBA; tournament poker should aspire to becoming iconic enough that its Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet scandals will happen. Life and business will go on. “Good for poker” keeps intact the protective shell TV has provided through its black and white exchange of otherwise grey information. This may or may not be a good thing.

Where my opinion differs from these others seems to be in that they’r defining ‘poker’ as the game, while I define ‘poker’ as the industry. When I say “good for poker”, I mean good for the health of poker as a televisable entity, good for the establishment of online poker as a legitimate business and pastime and good for everyone who’s invested their time and money so they might benefit from the constant influx of new money, be it through the fish or ratings. The game is the same one played over the last however many years. That’s not about to change.

Back to Jesus, he was at the final table of World Series of poker event #2 – $1,500 no-limit hold’em. Theo Tran, a good kid with one TV table, was the second-most recognizable name at the table. In other words, Jesus was in a league of his own.  He’d eventually go out in third.

I was cheering for Jesus because a win for him would be ‘good for poker’. I believe that while amateurs winning big tournaments can still be a major story, the continuity of the business routes from familliar ongoing storylines. The occasional Moneymaker is obviously pretty good, but Iultimately want people to latch onto a storyline and follow it for as long a they follow poker. Jesus Ferguson provides us with one of those storylines.

Jesus is by all accounts a very good guy. He’s given back to the game in spades with his part in the creation of FTP’s software, he’s done a fantastic job of branding himself (I asked him tonight while on the subject of branding “Isn’t it amazing what you can do with a hat?” Got a nice laugh out of that one) and is absolutely fantastic with fans. He never resorts to unruly behavior, speaks well in interviews…this guy’s been a great star. Those weren’t the reasons I cheered him on though. Not directly.

Those things all make Jesus a compelling sotry for people to latch onto. He’s a recognizable figure and that means that the longer he’s on the TV, the longer people are going to keep their TVs trained to the show. In turn, that means advertising space will be more effective, more advertising will mean more exposure for the online community and that means more people are coming to the table for the first time.

Put more simply, I wanted jesus to win to keep the fish coming to the table. Without them, the sharks will eat their own collective tail.

Before I get to the links, I want to say you should be checking out the blogroll at the right side of this page. I’m only going to link to quality there, so you shouldn’t go too wrong with yoru clicks. Special thanks to WickedChopsPoker, who gave this space a full-blown, hyperkink in their own blog. oh, and props also to them for Keeley Hazell. On with the links on a somewhat slow day;

- First, the link to the article on Phil Ivey and Eli Elezra I mentiond yesterday.

- Second, the Wise Hand of the Day on wisehandpoker.com com looks at an exhausting day.

- Third,  the Wise Hand of the Day on Pokerlistings looks at Jesus’ elimination hand.

ging to sign off not, can’t really see through my blurred eyes anymore. Hope you’re having a good week,

Gary Wise

gary@wisehandpoker.com

Meet The Press

Posted by admin on Jun 3, 2008

How do I do this to myself? I’m starting to blog at 5:10AM and I’m not really sure how it got this late. Seriously, it was a pretty mundane day at WSOP; no final tables, no massive drama. I didn’t play a hand of poker today, so where did the time go?

For one, it went to some lengthy conversations about the main event final table. Get together a bunch of industry insiders and its almost inevitable at this point. Some are excited for the drama the four month delay will build, some think that it’s an ineffective way to achieve the goals of a PR boost and others still think the collusion issue is too big to ignore.

Me, I’m a fan. I don’t see the collusion as much more of an issue than it has been in the past and I’m not usually a fan of breaking with tradition, but as far as health of the industry goes, I think something drastic had to be tried in order to save us from ratings death and programming removal. Is this it? I’m not really sure, but at this point in time, both in the poker timeline and in the AM, I’m happy to try anything without much resistance.

The big thing I took from that gathering of minds is the fact that part of my enjoyment of WSOP routes from the reunion with the finest journalists in the industry. Talking about the past, present, future, winners, losers, TV, tourneys, cash games, players, executives and everything in between lets me geek out with people I respect and can always learn something from. The interaction inspires me, as should be obvious from my recent output.

Bluff’s Lance Bradley has been a joy to work with. Nolan Dalla of WSOP has always loaned me his mentorship and continues to be an inspiration as the hardest working man in the game. BJ Nemeth provides the technical approach that supports my writer’s license, while Dr. Pauly surpassed my output while having the courage to talk about the darker (and therefore even more romantic0 side of the game. Dan Michalski, Jen Newell, Haley Hinte…these people have dedicated themselves to the game, and sharing the upper perch of the media partition with them provides constant inspiration.

The poker media doesn’t get enough love. It’s a mostly thankless task that doesn’t always pay what it should. Players possessed of ego or recoiling from contact can be difficult to approach, and being able to surpass all that is an underrated skill. These folks give their all to the game, cheesy as that may sound, and while yeah, ‘geeked out’ makes a lot of sense sometimes, it better not be used in a derogatory fashion, because without these people who have dedicated their lives to supplementing the game, the people who have followed the likes of Andy Glazer, Mike Paulle and Max Shapiro before them, there wouldn’t be much worth reading on the Interweb. Thank them the next time you see them recording a card or hacking furiously at a keyboard. You can point a finger and laugh at me though.

Speaking of reading things on the interweb…

In a new ESPN column, I remember last night’s stunning turn of events and note how each of the final four had somehow been previously overlooked;

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/poker/columns/story?columnist=wise_gary&id=3422466

Early in the day, Dewey Tomko and Billy Baxter were amongst the chip leaders. The two classic gamblers had me feeling nostalgic, as you’ll see here;

http://www.worldseriesofpoker.com/news/article.asp?newsID=2046

In the wisehandpoker.com Wised Hand of the Day, we see David Singer maneuver his way into a commanding chip stack here;

http://www.wisehandpoker.com/Handofday/archive/2008-wsop-day-4.php

In the PokerListings Wise hand of the Day, Nenad medic goes down to good buddy David Williams;

http://www.pokerlistings.com/poker-hand-of-the-day_wsop-day-4-no-repeat?show=all

I have one more article about to go up on worldseriesofpoker.com about Phil Ivey’s big bet with Eli Elezra, but frankly, I can’t really keep my eyes open any longer. 5:35. God I’m an idiot. I’m going to bed, as per usual. Nite,

Gary Wise
gary@wisehandpoker.com

maintained by: BJM for Gary Wise