Celebrity Photo Dump
This entry originally appeared on my WSOP blog at PokerTips.org.
It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog. I haven’t played any poker since busting out of Event 49 in 150th nearly a week ago. A week off has been so nice. My girlfriend was in town the whole time and we had a really nice week just doing various stuff around Vegas most of which didn’t involve poker.
On Saturday, we went to the Rio to check out some of the celebs in the Ante Up for Africa tournament. When she saw the WSOP (for the first time), she immediately noted that she didn’t understand how someone could play every day for the whole summer without going totally insane. That made me feel a little better about having gone kinda insane after five weeks of continuous poker!
There was a point on a dinner break last week where all I wanted was to get away from poker. Like, badly. I just wanted to go somewhere where I could sit down, enjoy a meal, and not be around anyone talking about poker. I tried a Thai restaurant about a mile from the Rio. Just as I was about to dig into my Pad Thai, I overheard this woman in the restaurant saying, “I three-bet him preflop with Seven-Six…”
AHHHHH!!!
I thought I was losing my mind. Is there not anywhere to go in this city to get away from people talking about various poker hands? It actually seems kind of funny to me looking back on it, but at the time I was losing it due to poker overload.
Hearing my girlfriend’s perspective on the WSOP was pretty interesting. It’s second nature to me at this point, so I’ve kind of lost perspective on how an outsider would be likely to view the poker culture. She just didn’t see how people could sit at a table all day every day without going insane and noted that a lot of the people we encountered apparently lacked basic social skills and kind of seemed like a part of this zombie sub-group incapable of functioning unless they’re gambling or talking about gambling.
Five weeks of being immersed in the poker community can take a toll on your sanity. Vegas and poker is such a false reality that I think hearing someone point out what an abnormal lifestyle the poker playing community has was kind of refreshing. It’s like, “oh yea, a bunch of people passing around millions of dollars over a deck of cards for six weeks is pretty nuts, isn’t it?”
I know it sounds like I’m dogging on poker and poker players, and in a way I kind of am, many of them are truly insufferable people, but I don’t want to make it sound like I don’t love poker or the poker culture. I do love poker. I have a blast playing poker and really enjoy the types of conversations you can have with poker players that are hard to achieve with people unaccustomed to forbidding emotions from playing a part in their thought process. But with that being said, everyone reaches their breaking point, and I think I reached mine after five weeks of nearly daily exposure to poker and poker players, so a week off felt really, really nice.
Okay, that’s enough about the psychology of poker. It’s time for a celebrity photo dump! (Apologies in advance for the picture quality that lies ahead; all of these were taken with my phone).
A few nights ago, I was hanging out with a friend in Aria who pointed out a gentlemen at a roulette wheel that he thought might have been Roger Clemens. I walked over for a closer look. Yup! That’s definitely Roger Clemens. I wanted to take his picture (I mean, it’s Roger Clemens!) but I figured he probably gets sick of being bothered in public, so I decided I’d just snap a picture of him on my phone from a few feet away. I really didn’t expect him to notice me, so I figured it was win-win: I get a picture of Roger Clemens, Roger Clemens gets to avoid being bothered by some fanboy.
There was just one problem: he noticed me. Right as soon as I was taking a picture of him, he wagged his finger at me and said, “dude, it’s not a zoo, if you want a picture all you have to do is ask!”
“I’m really sorry… but would you mind?” I asked, feeling pretty embarrassed to have gotten caught and called out. “Not at all!” he said. I gave my phone to my friend and pulled my girlfriend in for a picture with him. (I photoshopped her out since I dunno if she wants her picture on a poker portal that gets thousands of daily visits).
He was a really nice guy, and huge, too; I thought he was going to crush my hand when he shook it. We chatted with him for maybe a minute about Houston (since he’s played there) and about the WSOP (he asked what we were in town for). I told him he should give the Main Event a try and offered to coach him, but he said something to the effect of wanting to leave that stuff to the big boys like Hellmuth.
The next afternoon, we were walking through the Forum Shops at Caesars and noticed Pete Rose signing autographs at a collectables store (he’s the one with the hat on).
So in a span of like 15 hours, we saw two of the most famous baseball players of all-time, both of whom, incidentally, have had their storied careers overshadowed by controversy. Pretty ironic.
At the Ante Up for Africa event, we saw Matt Damon (black hat in the one seat; note the very DOJ-friendly table draw of Lederer and Ferguson seated together):
Jerome Bettis (ten seat) and Don Cheadle (seven seat):
And David Alan Grier:
I was surprised at how short Matt Damon is. He stood up at one point when his table broke and was like… little. The internet says he’s 5′10″, but he didn’t look an inch over 5′7″ to me. All in all, the celebs in the tournament seemed to be enjoying themselves. You could tell poker is still new and exciting to them. Ahh… I remember those days.
Today is Day 1A of the Main Event and I’m still not sure if I’m playing or not, though I would say it’s pretty unlikely at this point. I might try a couple of satellites, but barring luckboxing one of those, I doubt I’ll play this year. I’ll be fairly disappointed if I don’t end up playing, but what can you do?
The plan for the next few days is to bet soccer (Netherlands over Uruguay and Spain over Germany both for fairly big bets) and try to run hot in a couple of satellites or something. If push comes to shove, I might put a couple hundo on a number on roulette and try to spike a Main Event seat (how good does that story have the potential to be?). I’m taking suggestions for what number to bet (0-36). The suggestion with the most logical reasoning for why that number will hit might just get my action!
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