…and even then all you will get is a highly watered-down version of the real thing. Now is the time when you need a poker blogger the most. The average fan can’t get inside the Amazon Room right now unless he is willing to wait in line for twenty minutes and hope that someone inside wants to leave… and even then it’s not a guarantee. The same sort of patience must be employed once inside. There are so many full tables and eager fans and confused press roaming the aisles that navigating your way through the mess isn’t easy. I contented myself with observing play at Tables 183-189, a block of space one-hundredth that of the total area of the room, and yet there was still too much going on to take in all at once.
The pro making the most noise at his table isn’t Dewey Tomko (and that’s not to say he’s doing badly) but Alex Jacob. On a hand typical of his day so far, Jacob called a raise before the flop made by an obscure amateur. Amateur bet the K
5
2 flop. Jacob called. The turn was a blank, the 8
. Afraid to fire another bullet, amateur checked. Jacob read it correctly as weakness and not a trap. He fired three yellow chips at the pot. Amateur attempted to stare him down, but Jacob’s eyes were hidden in the shadow of his droopy Afro. Amateur mucked his cards with a sigh. One more example of a pro taking a pot away from someone showing weakness.
That was hardly the most exciting hand in that corner of the room. Several tables over, amateur Matt Shepski opened for a raise to $600. Amateur John Liss reraised to $2,100. Shepski called. The flop came A
K9. Shepski checked. Liss bet $4,000. Shepski grabbed his chip stacks and flung them sloppily into the pot. Liss quickly called, and asked Shepski, “Do you have aces?” He asked because it was the only hand that could beat his. He had kings, which thoroughly dominated Shepski’s A-K. The turn was a blank, but the river was an ace. Shepski had caught a two-outer to make a bigger full house on the river. And John Liss’s day, the day he had dreamed of for so long, was done. “What am I going to do?” Shepski asked. “Fold that hand? Top two. No way.”
Two tables down the line Devilfish Uliot was trying to take a hand away from an amateur the way Jacob had except Uliot didn’t have position on his opponent. The flop was 543, what looked like a classic Devilfish flop. He checked and called a guy who had what looked like a freshly shaved head that once held corn rows. Shaved Corn Rows fired again on the turn, which convinced Devilfish to give up chasing, but not without a snarl. “Did you raise thin again?” Meaning preflop, I guess. And he might not have even said that. Devilfish is hard to understand.
And then there was Dr. Pauley’s favorite player, Liz Lieu, sitting behind a tall, straight, and entirely phallic tower of chips. She was flinging around chips and betting big, using her position to take pots away from amateurs. As nice-looking as she is, none of the railbirds were looking at her. They were too busy gawking at Jeff Madsen. Madsen was playing in a jester costume (he lost a prop bet to Gavin Smith and Joe Sebok), and no one at his table was laughing, especially not the guy he won a big pot off of with 102. Madsen made trip tens to push his chip count above average.
Time to go check out another quarter acre inside the poker room….
