Secrets of the Amateurs

WSOP is pretty much a wrap as far as I'm concerned, now I can't funk for Camel/Miros or bok the pathetic Hellmuth. Small-minded I may be, but if Tiffany Michelle's luck runs out too, ESPN and Harrahs will be left with 9 complete randoms to try to hype for 4 months, and serve them right. There were a lot of reasons I didn't play the ME, or indeed any televised event, and one of them was that I felt that I wouldn't be on a level playing field with "name" pros. However unlikely it may be that I would personally be affected, Hellmuth's penalty being rescinded for no valid reason whatsoever simply backed that up. Perhaps they'll try to "wild card" him back in somehow. I wish I was entirely joking.

As for my little experiment, it was certainly interesting. As far as I can see, one of my 30 players made the money (Thayer for $32K). And while I could just as easily have come up with a couple more if their names had sprung to mind (e.g. Foucalt for $190K and Raptor for $77K), it's a touch short of $900K don't you think ? One to consider the next time people start throwing out 400-500% projected ROI for this thing. Terrence Chan ended up losing a small amount on his WSOP shorts although once again, none of his choices could top Hellmuth's $150K.

Back to the grind for me, and I've clawed a quarter of the Vegas damage back in a week, which is a good start. I'm surprisingly keen to play (can hardly wait most days) and I have a lot of bits and pieces I'm trying to integrate into my game. I ordered three books at once, and am kind of waiting for the last one to arrive before I do a combined review post, but I will say that Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand At A Time (Vol 1) is the absolute nizzles (that means it's good). I can think of several WSOP hands that I could have managed better if I'd read this book beforehand.

Lollerskates Update : Here's what Dr Pauly, who usually knows the score in Vegas, said about it a couple of days ago :

" I got confirmation that Hellmuth's appeal was based on two things...1. It was an act for ESPN cameras.2. He said that although he was given a warning many times before, it was always an idle threat and nothing every happened beyond that warning. He felt as though the timing of the penalty and that the lack of enforcement of previous warning was also justification for it to be overruled."

Yes, Hellmuth's case was that because warnings had never been properly followed up in the past, he wasn't expecting this one to be, and so the penalty was unfair. Not only did the tournament organisers buy this, their final sanction was to give him another warning.

You could not make this shit up. You really couldn't.