2006 February

Archive for February, 2006

Updated Plans

Well, the plan for going to Europe has been a complete disaster. Ozzy hasn’t been able to secure a visa to travel to the EPT Monte Carlo, which he won a seat for on Stars. He has a Pakistani passport and a US green card, so he needs a visa to travel to Europe. Unfortunately, the French consulate has not been very helpful thus far. Therefore, he won’t be making the trip and neither will I (I was only going if Ozzy, Roman and I were going to travel around after the tournament).

I’ve since made alternates plans. A bunch of 2+2ers are planning to go to Turning Stone in upstate NY. I had already planned on going to visit my sister, who is a senior at Cornell, and my grandmother, who lives in the area. It was logical to combine the trips because Ithaca is on the way to Verona, so I will be leaving for Ithaca later today, then continuing on to Verona on Wednesday of next week.

Once at Turning Stone, I’ll be staying with ActionJeff/Jeff1187, AaronBeen, and PeglegMcgee. I don’t know Aaron or Pegleg except for brief conversations online, but I spend a lot of time talking to Jeff online. We got two rooms in “The Lodge,” which is supposed to be the nicest place to stay at Turning Stone. Ozzy and thorladen both cautioned me against staying anywhere else at the resort.

The reason for the trip is two-fold. First, there are a number of decent size tournaments going off, including a two day $1K event next weekend. I’m not much a tournament player, but I’ll definitely play the cash games. Maybe I’ll find my way into a tourney or two if I get the urge. I’d want to look at the structure first though. The second reason is just to meet up with Jeff and other 2+2ers that I talk to online. People like Exitonly4, Ansky/supernova9, gobboboy and a number of others are supposedly going to be there (I’m not sure if it’s final for all of them). If anyone is in the area next week, please stop by.

Also, stevesbets is planning on playing the Foxwoods Poker Classic in April, so I plan on going up there for some cash games and to hang out. I also want to visit some people in Boston, so I’ll probably combine that trip as well.

Lastly, my plans for May. schaefer is going to spend his spring driving around the country going to every baseball stadium, so I decided I should meet up with him when he gets to Philly. His current plans have him being here on May 4th, so we’ll go to the Phillies-Braves game that day. After that, I still plan on doing a roadtrip with ahh_snap, but we haven’t worked out any details. I do have to be in Ithaca on Memorial Day weekend for my sister’s graduation, but other than that I’m pretty much free.

That’s it for now, time to go get a haircut before packing to go to upstate NY for ten days.

Nat :: Feb.24.2006 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »

Two short videos from the stevesbets WSOP final table

I uploaded two video clips that I took with my digital camera.

You should right-click and do save-as or save-link for both of these:

Steve’s Introduction: Starts just as Jack Effel is about to introduce Steve.

Steve’s Bustout Hand: Starts just as Steve is about to go all in with his nut flush draw and two over cards.

Please look at my previous entry for pics and other info.

Nat :: Feb.20.2006 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »

stevesbets gets 3rd in AC for $132K

On Friday morning, I went down to AC to watch my friend Steve Jacobs (stevesbets online) play the final table of the Harrah’s AC WSOP Circuit 10K event. Eric Haber (sheets) picked up Ozzy on his way down to AC so Ozzy could watch the final table and then come back to Philly with me for the weekend.

Here are the chip counts at the start of the final table:

Name - Chip Count
Brian Jensen - 191,500
Herbert Cheng - 168,000
Abraham Korotki - 160,500
Steven Jacobs - 149,500
Ed Corrado - 147,500
Jody Garaventa - 137,500
Harry White - 109,000
Jianhua Zhou - 108,500
Ernie Shepherd - 68,000

Also, here are the payouts:

1. $433,008
2. $240,560
3. $132,308
4. $96,224
5. $84,196
6. $72,168
7. 60,140
8. 48,112
9. 36,084

Anyway, play got underway around 2:30 PM on Friday afternoon. The blinds were at 3K/6K 500A for a few minutes before moving to 4K/8K/1K. The levels were 2 hours long with the progression being 3/6/.5, 4/8/1, 5/10/1, 6/12/1, etc, so it was a great structure.

Steve never played that many pots, although he did manage to pull out a big win here:

“Friday, 17th of February 2006 05:44 PM

Brian calls the blind, Steven raises to 40K. In the small blind, Eddie has to add 35K to call, but doesnt. Herbert in the big blind does call. Back to Brian, he calls. Huge skillet brewin’. Threeway action. A K Q rainbow on the flop. Checked. The turn is the Tc. Checked around to Steven, he takes the opportunity to bet 25K and Herbert calls. Brian does not. The river brings the Th. Herbert is first to act and he checks. Steven now moves all in for 66K. Herbert is in the hot seat. He sends his cards to the muck. Steven Jacobs picks up the biggest pot of the day so far.” -PokerPages.com

I know what Steve had, but I won’t reveal it here because he might not want people to know. If you want to read all the hand descriptions, Sharla’s final table blog is pretty good.

I took a lot of pictures, so here are twenty of the best. There are a lot of repetitive pictures, but this post is just as much for Steve’s friends and family who might want to see a lot of pictures from the event. Here we go, in order of when I took the pic…

Deep (Steve’s roommate), Bree (Steve’s girlfriend), Steve and Eric Haber (sheets). Steve is filling out his WSOP profile sheet.

The final table getting ready to start

Ozzy was almost immediately kicked out of the tournament room, so he had to wait outside during portions of the final table and just try to hear what was going on inside