The "Trip Report" below was written by Patri Friedman & posted to the rec.gambling.poker newsgroup. This all happened at the last World Series of Poker. I sweated the BIG game he talks about & it was to say the least very interesting!

Wow, There's A Lot Of Money On This Table!
(or How Seven Hours Can Cost $12000 in Blinds)

by Patri Friedman

This is a story about money, hundreds of thousands of dollars of it, piled
up and around and everywhere, bills enough to bathe in, to wallpaper a
mansion, to buy a ferrari and crash it and buy another and do it again. I
wish it was a story about that money in front of me, but it isn't, so
you'll have to console yourselves with the thought that I was just one
seat away, that it was close enough to reach over and grab if there hadn't
been Binion's security guards hovering over it, and the owner of the money
with his arms possessively around it, cradling the cash, glancing at it
lovingly. It is a story about taking a shot and missing, for such is the
uncertainty of the poker world.

This sentence is so I don't begin a paragraph with the name of a 2+2
publisher. This sentence really belongs in an article by Douglas
Hofstadter. Mason Malmuth has a theory about non-self weighting
strategies. The idea is that good gamblers win because they can vary
their bets, and so they identify when they have an edge and bet a lot
more. They find a few really good situations, and bet them hard. The
conventional application of this to poker is the fact that we put
different amounts of money in on different hands. However, if we look on
a larger scale, at what games we sit down at rather than what hands we
play, Mason's concept has obvious applications to the theory of poker game
selection. You should be willing to risk a lot more on good bets, which
means that you should be willing to play in much larger games when those
games are very good.

My naive impression, before playing in the big games, had been that to
play bigger you had to play better, that the $200-$400 games were full of
world-class players picking on those who were merely great. In my limited
experience, this does not seem to be true. Most professional poker
players don't have large bankrolls, and so they don't play at the really
high limits. Few poker players have a $200-$400 bankroll. On the other
hand, lots of businessmen, stock traders, and other sorts of wealthy
people do have the money to play that big. I'm not saying that there
aren't world-class players in these games, or that they are always very
live, just trying to explain what I think the reasons are for these big
games sometimes being so good.

During my first few days at this years World Series of Poker, I had spent
some time talking and playing (at the Bellagio) with an r.g.p'er who was
spending his week proving this concept. He had enough money from sources
outside of poker to play the big games, and consequently was making a
great deal of money. Capital is a valuable asset in any business, and
poker is no exception. Having more money means you can make more money by
moving up in limit - you don't always have to get better to earn more.

With this as my mindset, I wandered into the satellite area downstairs at
Binions at around three or four o' clock sunday morning, after an evening
of $200-$400 HE at the Bellagio. There were rumours about some sort of
fantastically big no-limit game upstairs, with blinds as big as the limit
game I'd just been playing. The chief story involved someone opening
with QQ, being raised thirty thousand dollars, and calling all-in against
an opponent who showed K2. A king came on the flop, of course. I tried
not to break into a run as I headed towards the stairs.

In the middle of the Horseshoe's converted bingo room was a table, and on
this table was a whole lot of money. There were two live spots, the one
seat and the five seat. The one seat was drunk and talking a lot, and the
five seat was the big winner. It was hard to see much else, given the
crowd surrounding the table, but it was clear that the game was good. I
looked at the list. Miraculously, only two names were ahead of me. A
seat in this game, I was convinced, was worth a hell of a lot of EV. But
it was 4AM, the blinds were two and four hundred, the buy-in was ten
thousand, and there just weren't very many people around willing and able
to risk that much cash on a shot. The poker room was pretty empty, just a
few other games going, and how many people are there, even at the WSOP,
willing to risk five digits in a poker game?

Paul Phillips, maybe. I looked around but didn't see him, and decided it
would be unwise to call his cellphone at this ungodly hour. That left me,
so I put my name on the list. At this point, I was up about $15K for the
year before the series, and another $15K for the series. Given my large
non-poker bankroll, I decided that I was willing to risk my $30K in
profits on this single shot. What kind of gambler would I be if I saw a
great, great bet and didn't take it? Not the kind of gambler I am,
obviously :).

I went to my box and brought back thirty thousand dollars in cash, hundred
dollar bills won by guile, trickery, skill and luck from dozens of devious
opponents, money that was twice, no twenty times, no - infinitely sweeter
than money earned. I counted it with delight, banded it in
big-dance-buy-in sized packets, and played with it as I waited and
watched. Two of the players in the game (Mansour Matloubi was one) were
short stacked ($20K or less), and so I had an excellent chance of getting
in. Two hours later, it happened. One player went to bed and Mansour
went bust. O' Neal Longston took one seat and I took the other, and I was
in.

The one seat was most of what the game was built around. Thirties or
forties, overweight, well-dressed, his name was Mark, he was drunk, and
boy did he like to talk. Every hand he wanted to negotiate a deal, show a
card, see a card, or just blather on about something. He was sometimes
pretty funny ("Is it me, or is this kid in way over his head?"), and he
was the mark everyone wanted to fleece. According to rumour, he used to
be a good player, maybe even a professional, but he had made a lot of
money in the stock market and now he didn't care (especially while
drunk). Daniel knows him well.

The five seat was the big winner. His name was Hector, a latino rancher
from Texas, and he had about $100K in front of him when I sat down. By
the end of the night, this had swelled to $500K or more (rumour says
$700K), a memorable run that will be talked about for years, unless (or
perhaps even if) he's already broke, which wouldn't surprise
me. According to rumour, he was down a great deal of money, and had taken
his last $8K and run it up to $40K in the 100-200 PLO game, before
getting into this one and being hit over the head with the deck like a
fairy godmother gifting him with her magic wand. He was bad but not
terrible.

The other players in the game were pretty solid, with the exception of the
three seat on my right, who was weak but certainly not terrible. The kind
of player I want to have filling in the seats between the live ones, but
not someone who makes the whole game good. The two seat was Benjamin, a
nice middle-eastern looking fellow with a british accent. The six seat
was O'Neal, the legendary PLO player. The seven seat was Tony Dee, a
legendary high-stakes gambler, and the only good player (besides me) who
lost. The deck took from him what it gave to Hector, and he lost at least
a hundred grand while I was there (rumour says $250K). The eight seat was
Ali, a veteran of the big games, and while he looked like someone who had
made his money elsewhere (and has the reputation of being live), in this
situation he was playing a solid game, and wasn't giving anything
away. The nine seat was Texan Jim Bechtel, the victim of the QQ vs. K2
incident, but he recovered quite well.

The game was what I think of as typical in no-limit games where a couple
players are very live and the rest are solid. The one and five seats
were involved in most hands and most confrontations, while the other
players waited for good hands and took turns taking them on. There was
little to be gained by playing hands against the other players in the
game, and so no one was "putting plays" on anyone else, contrary to what
happens in a normal game, where varying your play is a must. There was
little point in bluffs or semibluffs when there were two big-stacks
waiting to look you up. And it was dangerous to bet a hand that you
weren't willing to back with your stack when there were two big-stacks who
loved to move in. One of the great things about poker is how different
lineups can influence the flow of the game, and in no-limit this makes a
huge difference.

The game was slow, perhaps 20-25 hands an hour. The mathematics of poker
tells us that while I should expect a pair of aces only once every 221
hands, jacks or better should come about 4 times as often, or every 55
hands. I played for seven hours, perhaps 150 hands, without seeing a pair
bigger than tens. The tens came once, the flop had two overcards, and
into the muck they went. I had ace-king twice, winning the blinds both
times, and no ace-queens. I believe I paid something like $12000 in
blinds alone, and by 1PM sunday, when Mark and Hector left, I was down to
$10K of my initial $30K. My shot had failed. But you don't want to hear
about that, I've given my reasons and made my arguments already. You want
to hear about the action, about what kinds of hands get shown in a no
limit game with blinds of two and four hundred dollars, about what it
takes to win a one or two hundred thousand dollar pot.

First we'll talk about a couple of the hands I played. AJ, with a
jack-high flop. I bet $2K and only Mark calls me, saying "Hey, the tight
kid is in! I bet he has a monster!" The flop was something like J86 w/
two hearts. The turn was a ten of hearts, making the straight and flush
both possible. Mark moves-in. I fold. He shows a straight, saying "To
bet into the tight kid, I've gotta have a monster!". I'd always thought
you were supposed to bet good hands into loose players and bluff tight
players, but I kept those thoughts to myself and congratulated him on his
excellent play.

In the other hand I was involved in, I had KJs in late position and saw a
cheap, multiway flop. Several players, including Mark, checked, and I
tried to bet a few grand at the J76 flop. The player on my right (the
semi-live guy) said "Wait, I didn't check, I'm going to bet" I attempted
to withdraw my bet. Benjamin wasn't sure if that was allowed, and asked
for the floorman to be called. The floorman said I could withdraw my bet,
it didn't have to stay in. Benjamine apologized to me, saying that in the
casinos he plays in (in Britain), the bet would have to stay in. I said
it was no problem. He repeated his apology, wanting to make sure that I
understood that he didn't have anything against me, he wasn't trying to be
rude, he just hadn't been sure about the rule (this may have been a tell,
given the subsequent action). I said that was fine, that I was not going
to be bothered by calling a floorman when a rule was unclear.

Anyway, the guy on my right bet, and I folded, as did those on my
left. Mark called, and then Benjamin made a substantial raise (maybe ten
or twenty grand). The guy on my right showed me AJ and folded. I told
him that I'd had KJ. Benjamin got all-in on either the flop or turn for a
total of $40K or so, and they dealt the cards twice. His set of sevens
won both times.

Presto was a big loser for Tony Dee, who thought he had a big hand when
the flop came 234. Hector had 56, however, and busted Tony for forty
grand. AJ with a flop of ATx seemed like a big hand for Tony too, but
Mark had AT and picked up another bundle of cash for people to look at and
drool.

One of the biggest pots of the night occured between Mark &
Hector. Hector had K3, and Mark had the ace of clubs and either the seven
or nine of clubs. The flop come K3x w/ two clubs, Mark bet five grand,
and Hector called. At this point, Mark had about $80K-$120K in front of
him, and Hector had about $170K. The turn was an ace, Mark bet $5K,
hector raised it to $30K. Mark called him with top pair and the nut flush
draw. The river was a three, filling up Hector. It was *not* a club, but
Mark was drunk and got all-in anyway, betting at the pot and calling when
Hector moved in. A few minutes later, as Hector stacked the bills and
five-thousand-dollar chips in front of him, Mark asked a friend, who was
sweating him, what he'd had in that big pot. "Just a pair of aces", the
friend replied. "I got all-in on *that*?" replied Mark. "Wow." We all
filled in the rest, mentally: "He sure is drunk."

Hector's stack of bills grew, and he asked for something to put it
in. They brought him two playover boxes, and he filled them with bills
and eventually piled more on top. As hands turned on the clock and
arbitrary numbers, empty with no visible natural phenomenon to flesh them
out, steadily increased, people began pouring in to the room. There was a
tournament (?$2500 NL?) at noon, and a steady stream of players, shaking
the sleep from their eyes, walked in and saw The Game. Our audience, held
off by velvet ropes and security guards, swelled to mammoth size. More
people than sweat a non-big-one WSOP final table were watching us play -
appropriately, as there was more money on the table than is at stake in
those tournaments. Big Name Players came by, tossing a practiced glance
over the participants, divining immediately who was stuck and who was
winning, who were the attractions. They all saw Hector's stack, and,
despite years of study at the science of keeping a blank face, this
unexpected confrontation with close to a million dollars in cash triggered
something in each of their faces. A clench of Johnny Chan's cheeks, the
shake of T.J. Cloutier's head, Phil Hellmuth's smile getting a little
broader, just for a second. Unlike the populace, watching in envy, able
only to dream about making a score like that, the Big Names were able to
look behind as well as ahead, summoning the treasured memories of their
moments of glory.

My stack was far from enviable, but I saw a few friends, r.g.p'ers and
real life acquaintances looking my way, eyes widening in wonder, the
inevitable question on their faces. I shook my head a few times, made the
thumbs down signal, and went back to playing at the game of waiting. We
were, as it happened, in the middle of the tournament area, and so it had
to be re-routed around us. As noon grew close, they managed (with
difficulty) to clear the watchers out from around us so the tournament
could begin. Without the crowd around us, the game suddenly felt less
elegant, less glamorous, and more like a cold-hearted method for
redistributing wealth. Mark and Hector must have felt it too, because
they didn't last much longer. Mark went bust and reached into his jacket
to find an empty pocket, got up, and staggered home to bed. Hector picked
up a pair of kings, ONeal flopped a set of nines, and doubled up his $40K
stack. Hector, angry at having lost forty thousand from his
three-quarter-million stack, stood up and began the far from trivial
process of racking his chips and pocketing his bills.

The story is going to dodge back to me for a second, and not a happy
one. With Mark and Hector gone, I knew I was no longer the favorite, and
I was ready to leave. Unfortunately, as it turned out, it was my button,
and I decided I'd just play a couple hands (we all know how these stories
end). I had $9000 left. I picked up two big cards that looked good, made
top pair with a good kicker, and one of the blinds had aces. I was
short-stacked and exhausted, and he trapped me. Game Over. The first
$21K I blame on the cards, but those last nine - I have no one to blame
but myself. Now I was even for the year.

For the rest of the WSOP (and even at games back home in NoCal), every now
and then I would hear rumours being spread, people talking about the game,
telling stories. Sometimes I would interrupt and correct them, sometimes
someone would point me out as having played, and sometimes I would just
sit there smiling as I heard how poker truth flows into poker legend. I
don't know how much of the money he had left, but Hector was back for the
big one, and he remembered me, his right-hand-side companion. He showed
me a picture, taken during the game. He is sitting at the table, money
piled in front of him, leaning forward, smiling broadly. And on one side
of him, clearly visible in the 8 x 11 glossy, is a young kid with a much
smaller pile of chips, sitting back and waiting for a hand that never
came. Such is the nature of poker, a game of luck, of draws, of freak
occurences where anyone can win.

If it was my only chance, I would regret it a lot more. But the long-term
is far longer than a single night or a single WSOP. Games like that don't
happen very often, but they do happen, and I will play in them
again. In fact, a week later, George the Greek was in town, and they
played $200-$400 blind pot limit (omaha, perhaps) at the Bellagio. I
wasn't ready for another shot so soon, but I will be. Until then, I
remain,

Patri