The only thing that could make me miss the NFL playoffs is… actually, there’s nothing that could make me miss the NFL playoffs. But with John Duthie and Praz Bansi both on the Pokerstars Live EPT table from the PCA in the last 27, and John a runaway second in chips, I will at least attempt to watch them both at the same time and blog about the results. What better way to spend a Sunday.
6:15 pm: Having trouble getting PokerStars Live to start. Must be a delay in the coverage. No matter. Dr. Bob loves New England at -3. Good thing I got that bet locked in yesterday. Liberace, on the other hand, loves Arizona in the late game and we’re currently waiting for the line to move.
I have two handicapping services and three sports gambling bankrolls. Dr. Bob is currently down 50 percent on the year. Liberace is up 5 percent. Dr. Bob spends 19 hours a day pouring stats into a mammoth database and uses slide rules and bell curves and a complicated star system. He charges for his picks, but I like the thought of him surrounded by numbers. Liberace wakes up on Sunday morning and spends a few hours on the Internet. He knows nothing about football, but it doesn’t matter. He’s brilliant. Knows how to let other people do the work for him.
A few of Liberace’s formative years were spent as a trader in Curacao in the heydays of Pinnacle Sports. Liberace trained under a pioneer genius in sports betting who specialized in how money moves. Basically, he figures out what the smart guys are playing without being one himself. It works. My third bankroll, by the way, is for the bets that I pick out myself. It’s down 20p on the year. I probably should have taken up Origami in 2009 as a more profitable hobby.
7:00 pm: Moved the laptop into the living room to settle in for the rest of the night. EPT Live is up and running, but still not showing any PCA coverage. Nice commercial, however - so this is what Vanessa and Daniel do for their money. I’m sort of discovering that Vanessa is the female equivalent of durrrr, i.e. she is about as socially awkward as a piece of couch lint. Quite able to cover it up however, with smiles and often use of the word awesome.
7:05 pm: Kick-off in the NFL and PCA live coverage commence at the exact moment. Serendipity. I am now officially overloaded. Baltimore runs first play from scrimmage 90 yards for a touchdown. Four minutes into the day and I am buried. Time to start betting in running on Betfair.
7:07 pm: Thank god for Nick Wealthall in the commentary box. Who’s the other guy? Great TV table. Duthie is wearing an awesome retro French Foreign Legion hat that the commentators are slating. Don’t they know that Duthie has a fashion sense that puts all others to shame? He’s the man when it comes to dressing. Also, Robert Mizrachi, the part of the Grinder trilogy that is now looking to be the most consistent. Praz, on a short stack.
Baltimore has just scored another touchdown, making this game now into ridiculous territory only five minutes in. Glad I got into them for a little on Betfair. Now time to back New England at silly odds. Praz with a squeeze play all-in. Duthie in the middle and a million dollar decision. He passes and Praz all in with A-T versus A-Q. Nick Wealthall calls for a jack of spades on the river and it slides in. Bang! Praz makes a straight to more than double up. Go on the Hit Squad.
7:20 pm: I’m not sure if Wealthall is drunk or just wiggy, but it’s fun. He’s talking like he’s singing into a hairbrush in the mirror in his room. Mizrachi out in a race, and the “Real Grinder” is gone.
7:50 pm: Duthie raises four out of five pots and only manages to split one of them. But he’s got the chips to afford it. Then he’s moved off the TV table to balance them. How can you move Duthie off of the TV table? He’s nearly half of the tournament. Bansi runs into aces and gets knocked. Feels like what happened to Akenhead at the WSOP. Hope, no hope.
8:10 pm: Baltimore started the game trading at 3.0, now they are 1.15. What a collapse by New England, who trail 24-7 and it’s only the second quarter. The New England offensive line is like a piece of cheesecloth. I need a miracle Brady comeback. There is absolutely no way either of these teams can get out of the next round. Too sloppy. PCA on a break while they redraw for tables at 16 players. Hopefully this will see John Duthie restored to the feature table
8:20 pm: Pokerstars commercial featuring twenty interviews of Team Pros and asking them the tough questions. Amazingly, eleven Team Pros have the same resolution to win a big tournament in 2010. Fifteen of them then agree that it is a wonderful thing to help out charity while you play poker. Eye-opening stuff.
8:50 pm: Duthie back on the feature table and Greg Raymer in the commentary box. Two good results. Duthie is looking in fine fettle. Raymer says that when Duthie is on his A game, people have no chance. The chip leader is on his left, with nearly double chips over second place. Baltimore get their like fifth interception of the day and it’s time to start thinking about the get even game.
9:00 pm: Third time seeing the EPT presenter and I’ve only just realized that it’s Michelle Orpe. Have you seen her new hair do? Definitely a great look for her. Not sure she can carry off eleven inches of cleavage, but she’s giving it her best shot. The gig is a good fit for both her and Pokerstars.
9:30 pm: Shame we’ve lost Raymer. He is one of the smartest talkers about poker out there, although I feel like his life could use a little more spontaneity. Jason Mercier now in the box. Duthie has turned into tight mode the last half hour, and picked up one pot with a check raise on the flop while defending his big blind. I think he wants this one. You couldn’t think of a guy who is more popular in the poker world, and yet when it comes to PokerStars itself, they treat him as a bit of a leper. How much fun it will be if he wins. Barry Shulman wins a pot and tries to pull his pants up to his chest. I hope this won’t be Roland in thirty years.
10:00 pm: Fantastic video of Peter Eastgate sumo wrestling Joe Cada. Classic. Must be seen. James Hartigan taking every opportunity to criticize John Duthie. I think a lot of people resent him. Which is ridiculous. How can you resent John Duthie? NFL Game into garbage time. Baltimore going through. On the bright side, found Arizona getting three points so I’m well on track for the get even game.
The get even game holds a sacred place in American sports betting history. When I lived in Vegas, there was always a college basketball game that tipped off at 9pm Vegas time on Monday night, usually something like the University of Hawaii versus California Long Beach, a completely meaningless game that always had lines out the back to bet on it as it was always the last game of the week, and so became the largest wagered sporting event of the week. The last NFL game of the week is the same. It doesn’t matter who’s playing. If you’re stuck you have an opinion.
Big pot for John Duthie. Chip leader raises early to 140,000 and a red haired Internet kid named Tyler Reiman smooth calls around to Duthie in the big blind. John reraises to 550k and Reiman shuffles his stack for a while before reraising all in for about five million. Duthie snaps with Aces and Reiman has two queens. They both have almost the same stack, so a pot really for the chip lead. Go on, Mr. Big! And the queen peels off on the door. Horrible. Now that’s a sick game. Duthie never moves a muscle. He’s left with nothing. What a gentleman. I feel slightly sick. I’m not sure if I can watch anymore. Tough way to start the new year.
Duthie wins his next all-in to go from one big blind to three and says, “To be honest, I’d rather have gone out for a smoke.” Tyler Reiman, by the way, also very gracious in taking that pot. Duthie out the next hand, and, to be honest, so am I.
22:30 pm: On to the Main Event: Green Bay Packers versus the Arizona Cardinals for a place in the final eight on the way to the Super Bowl. Being over in Europe, I don’t get to watch as much NFL during the season as I would like. They only show two games a week in Denmark and three or four if I’m in the UK. But as I’ve been to Vegas for the Super Bowl ten out of the last eleven years, around this time of year it becomes crucial to watch the playoffs and get set up for the Super Bowl itself.
The Super Bowl is the greatest single betting event on the calendar, and I’m not just being sentimental. It’s beautiful in its simplicity, it’s like a presidential election but without the politics and polls. There’s one betting line, and everybody in the world knows what it is. Pick a side, 10/11 each way. What could be greater than that? What is greater, obviously is the many obscure prop bets that you can have on the game itself, the individual performance of every player, magnificently reduced to an over/under of yards or tackles. Get yourself a nice stack of fifty small tickets, ten bigger ones, and one or two that are your banker. And then you’ve got action.
22:40 pm: Kick-off and we are underway. Brett Favre’s old team against last year’s narrow Super Bowl losers. And an interception on the first play, back to Arizona. Gotta like that.
23:15 pm: This game fizzling as well. Arizona already ahead 17-0. So much for drama. Arizona already looks like a tough team to face in the next round.
I spend the rest of the game watching from bed. I get myself in a Betfair trading hole, when you back a team at 1.15 and then the price goes out to even money and worse and you’ve now bet your entire Betfair bankroll on a 1/6 shot and have no way out, so you just lie there with a sick feeling in your stomach and watch, horrified. Now that’s action.
Green Bay ties the game up in the fourth quarter and Arizona miss an easy field goal as time runs out. They lose the coin toss in overtime and my money is going up in smoke. Then they get a miracle interception and win the game. I win small on the day, but get the thrill of almost getting slaughtered.
Next day I watch most of the final table on EPT live, despite myself.
I want to address something that I’ve been thinking about lately, as I’ve been watching more poker than usual over the last few weeks. I’ve watched some Poker After Dark, some WSOP coverage, some EPT Live, as well as the Million Dollar Cash Game. In general, I think all poker commentary has improved since the dark early days where the only thing that mattered was the size of the pot. There is a lot of quality out there, and several commentators that I admire. But the biggest danger for a commentator is sounding bitter. It’s a trap that is so easy to fall into. Viewers are always on the prowl for bitterness, because they expect a poker commentator to be bitter. You see so many people doing so well in tournaments, many of them clearly stumbling there way through the minefields of tournament poker, and the natural reaction is why not me? Why can’t I win at poker, is the back story for almost every poker commentator. But bitterness, in my opinion, is the most unattractive quality in a poker commentator. And if you are bitter it’s impossible to hide it. The only way, in fact, not to be bitter is to actually not be bitter. That’s what I’m going to say on that.
The other thing is that there’s a fine line between joking around with a Pro expert and baiting him. I mean what’s up with James Hartigan on EPT Live? He’s like Rush Limbaugh on a poker show. He just insults every Pro that comes into the box with him and when he doesn’t insult them he belittles them. It’s like he hates everybody. Is that funny? That he hates everybody? What’s he got against Jason Mercier?
Vicky Coren comes into the box. She says, “The chap with the ginger hair. Is he the little horror that had the queens against John Duthie’s aces?” She’s a lovely commentator. Barry Shulman gets all in with an A-Q against the 5-7 and Vicky offers a $100 bet straight up taking the 5-7. Nick Wealthall spills his coffee in accepting, but of course we are all funking now for the 5-7. Doesn’t win, and Barry doubles up.
It happens to be a great final table. Kudos to PokerStars for the production value, which is quite high. Very watchable product. Daniel Negreanu comes into the box and is his usual fascinating self for a half hour, and then Victor Ramdin, who seems to feel his mission is to mention the tournaments on PokerStars.net in every sentence. We get it, Victor. You can play tournaments on PokerStars.net. Thank you. The winner, a 19-year old kid with a hoodie, deserves it. Best player on a final table that was very high quality.
Now only if PokerStars can sort out betting in running, my 2010 will be made.