Chris Halverson’s Blog

Classic WSOP

This week ESPN Classic is showing old WSOP shows. Monday night was the 1993 final table. They are going to be showing the 1993, 1994, and 1995 WSOP this week. Next week will be the 1997 and 1998 WSOP as well as the 1996 US Poker Championship. The first week of October brings us the 1998 and 1999 US Poker Championship and the 2001-2002 US Poker Open. Two weeks later is the 2002 and 2003 WSOP.

Nice!

I watched the 1993 episode last night and it was interesting, remember, this is the time before hole cams. Dick Van Patten is the host along with the Binions poker manager. They didn’t mic up the Binions guy very well so it was hard to hear his comments and Van Patten’s commentary was sketchy at best. Of course, it’s hard to commentate on something that you can’t see. At one point it’s down to three and the short stack is facing going all in. He sits there forever and you’re not sure if he should even be thinking about a call or not due to not being able to see the cards. It’s definitely not as exciting as having the hole cams. It was kinda funny seeing Mansour Matloubi smoking at the table on TV (then storming off after he gets knocked out, not shaking anybody’s hand or anything).

What was really interesting was the bits they did while interviewing people (remember, this was 1993). The Binions people were agog with the huge turnout which less than 300. They interviewed Doyle, Chip Reese, Johnny Moss and a young Ted Forrest. The topic? The young guns who were taking over poker! They were going on about how much more mathematical and analytical they were while the “old guys” relied more on experience. Kind of funny that this was a hot topic then much as it is now. For what it’s worth, Telly Savalas commented that he’d put his money on the old guys.

It was an interesting year. Hellmuth won 2 or 3 bracelets that year as did Forrest. A lot of big names won titles that year and they are still around. Sure, some of the main event winners haven’t been heard from in tournament poker since then, but it is interesting to see the consistency of some of the others (including Hellmuth).

Anyway, make sure to check these out. My TiVO is already setup.

Variance

I went about clearing the last 100 hands that I needed to complete my monthly bonus at Poker Plex. The poker gods decided that they would make sure that I had not forgotten the meaning of the word “variance” and “second best hand after the river” during my couple of weeks off. Yikes. I was working to clear a $50 bonus. During 100 hands I lost $55. Great. The Crypto sites are geared toward Europeans so the best times to play are during evening hours in Europe. I got in at about 6:30PM CDT which is around 12:30AM in England. In other words, I got the drunk gambooler crowd. It was a crazy time and did not go well at all.

Thanks to PokerTracker now being able to import Crypto histories, I played my hands out and then pulled up the status to ensure that I was doing the right thing and not just tilting this away. Thankfully I found out that with just a couple of exceptions I was ahead going to the river. Therefore I played well, but probably didn’t raise enough (or was in EP so I couldn’t raise) to make the odds incorrect for people to follow along. Of course, this was 1/2, so that probably wouldn’t have happened anyway. There were a couple of times where I bet too much, such as when somebody flopped a full house and I picked up a set and was drawing dead the whole way but I had a great hand and the guy never raised until the river, and I definitely called down too much on the turn, so that’s something I need to look at. At 1/2, fancy play just doesn’t really exist, so when somebody wakes up and raises on the turn, they probably have a hand. I made the mistake of thinking people were representing hands.

After reviewing my hands and ensuring that I wasn’t on a tilt fest, I jumped over to Party. I pulled up two tables and proceeded to piss away another 25BB. What a night. I haven’t extensively reviewed those hands yet, but it was brutal. I thought I was going to be off to a great start when I posted the BB and saw rockets. I raised it up and all the 5 callers came along. They held up and I was up 12BB on my first hand. Unfortunately things went downhill from there. It’s a great feeling to have your flopped broadway straight be beaten by a rivered flush when the guy is hold 62s and called three bets on the flop when none of his suit fell. Oh well, as they say, that’s poker.

Needless to say, it was not a good night, but looking back at some of hands, I see I played well and with just a couple of exceptions, I had odds to call the whole time, so I feel good about how the night went. I am playing more agressively, so that will increase my variance. It sucks to lose money, but the better play makes it at least tolerable. Sometimes you just aren’t going to win even if you play perfect poker (and rest assured, I don’t play perfect, it’s just a saying). Therefore I feel OK with the night as I played correctly.

Sports

Monday night brought at least one good point: The Twins clinched their third straight AL Central Division title. The Twins are looking good right now. The AL Cy Young will be coming this way and we just keep winning. Look out NY, we’re going to get you this year and pick up our third World Series!

The Vikings, on the other hand, stunk up the joint on MNF. Nice offensive line. Geez. Fumble on the goal line? Sure, why not. Unreal. We need Kleinsasser back in a big way. The Eagles sure showed why they’ve been in the NFC title game the last three years. I don’t think that Owens caught that touchdown pass, but it wasn’t challenged so it doesn’t really matter I guess. It may not have mattered in the end though, although if Culpepper had scored instead of fumbled and if the Eagles hadn’t scored on that Owens pass, it would have been a much different game. Oh well, it’s a long season, we’re not done yet.

I’m sucking bad in all my football pools. It’s just terrible. Pauly’s one is a points spread one and I’m terrible at picking point spreads. My office one is not going well either. We do a weekly one there and I’ve been nowhere close. It’s a good thing I don’t bet on sports because I’d be broke. It is fun though.

Oh well, hope the cards are holding up for you!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 21st, 2004 at 8:46 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.