Poker Articles

The following is an excerpt from a piece I am working on regarding my backing of the crew....this is very much a work in progress and off the top of my head....any comments would be appreciated...

Tunica Part 1

One of the problems with an investment like this is determining just what level of transparency to demand of the player.  I guess I could just ship him the cash, and after the 2 weeks have him let me know how we did.  That was certainly not enough.  Likewise, I suppose I could have demanded text messages every single hand as well, but that was asking too much for sure.  So we just settled on having him call me when he either got knocked out or when he was in the money.  Well what this turned into was a daily ritual of staring at my cell phone, praying it wouldn’t ring....a classic case of "no news is good news."  

Tourneys start at noon....day 1, 2:45 pm...."hey bro, I just got knocked out of triple draw...stood pat with a thingamajig and someone drew to a queen low something or other and I am out."  Day 2....3:12 pm...."hey bro, I just got knocked out of the stud....someone filled up on 6th street and got there against my 2 pair....later"....and so it went for 4 days.  He didn’t SEEM in particularly bad spirits.  After all, it's only a few events.  And that brings us to day 5, POT LIMIT HOLDEM.

The dreaded phone call hadn't come yet and it was already 5pm....sweeeeet.  We got ACTION!  My phone was working and I was PSYCHED!  7pm passes....no call....NICE. I know that the money doesn't get paid out in this event until its down to 3 tables, so I called Tunica and asked how far along they were....they told me there were about 6 tables left, but they couldn't check for me on chip counts....10pm!!!!! Still no call....woohooo....I am a genius....gank owns, and we are so gonna cash.  I called tuinca and they said they were on the bubble....12 MIDNIGHT AND THE PHONE IS STILL SILENT. I can't take it anymore....I tried calling gank's cell and got a machine...."DUDE I AM SO PSYCHED....PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOUR CHIP COUNT, I AM SO PSYCHED."

About 15 minutes later, the phone rang...."hello?"  "Hey bro, sorry about that....I didn't really feel up to playing today, so I slept all day."

Now Linkoping is a very quiet place.  Not much happens. But if one looks in the archives, he will see a 3.0 earthquake registered at about this time.  Verizon stock went up ever so slightly as my phone smashed into a million pieces against the wall.  I really did not know what to say....all I could come up with was...."ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND??????????"  Granted it wasn't the most tactful approach, but that's really all I could think to say.

Apparently Gank had been demoralized just a little by the losses so far, and he needed one of what would become known as the sheets pep talks.  Now these come in many forms and have different effects on different people.  With Scotty, I would have to get into a huge fight with him about something meaningless for him to get his game back.  With Brett, it was the opposite.  I assured him that my confidence was high, and that gank owns, etc. etc. etc. etc...  He is a very emotional guy, and he really felt bad that he was losing me money.  I assured him that I was a big boy and could take it, and that he should JUST FUCKING PLAY!!!!!  Well I was due to arrive myself in a few days anyway, so he pretended to be motivated by me and got back to playing.

When I arrived, Gank had still not cashed, but I really wasn't too worried.  As I said before, I know very little, but I know talent, and I knew this kid was destined for a wsop bracelet and more.  When I arrived, he introduced to me to Scotty and Dutch, who were trying to grind out some profits here and there in some of the smaller events going on at the Grand.  Scotty had cashed for something and Dutch was just chilling out.  I got a chance to talk poker and life with all of them, and I was impressed with all of them on many levels.  I will go into more of this later, but suffice it to say that they were all very unlike each other, but all brilliant in their own ways.   It was on this day that I would make one of the decisions that, to be perfectly honest, helped change the poker world, and helped these kids become famous.

To be continued...