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Third Time’s a Charm
I continue my tales of the Premier League in London on my third heat. For those of you just tuning in, the internationally broadcast Premier League invites 12 world-class players to compete in several heats. Ultimately, six players compete in the finale. Four of the final players are chosen based on their scores. Two are chosen from secondary “heats.” Each player took their point total times 10,000 to the six-player finale. Each heat would be broadcast as an hour-long TV show.
On Day 2, I won my first heat, then played in another heat featuring Eddie Scharf, Vicky Coren, Juha Helpi, Kiril Gerasimov and David Devilfish Ulliot. I was the only player to play in two heats in one day. Would the fatigue catch up with me? Would I “donk off” my chips? Or, could I win three in a row? Early on, Devilfish kept raising my blinds, and I told myself that he wasn’t going to run me over, not today! With the blinds at $3,000-$6,000, Devilfish opened on the button for $18,000 with As-8s, and I moved all-in for $70,000 with 7h-5h. The Fish studied a full minute and finally called. Amazingly, the flop was 8-6-4! I had flopped a straight, and I had gone from first one out had I lost the pot — and zero points — to chip leader with $140,000!
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A ‘League’ of My Own
Last column, I began talking about my first game at the internationally covered Premier League in London. Poker’s exploding worldwide, and this was a great chance to get my name, and my brand, out there.
The Premier League in a nutshell: 12 world-class players vie for points in six “heats.” The top four scorers and the top two winners of heads-up matches advance to the finale. Also, each player took their point total times 10,000 to the six-player finale (28 points equaled $280,000). Each heat would be an hour-long TV show. We ended up with a 14-week series.
After winning my first heat, I had the early lead in the Premier League with eight points. In addition to playing on Day 1, I also did the commentary for the second heat that same day. Thus, I came in a bit tired Day 2, and I had scheduled myself to play both heats that day, back-to-back. Oh well, if you let fatigue get to you in poker, you’ll rarely win. I have spent the last 20 years dealing with fatigue in poker, and I feel like I’m finally handling it well. So off we went in my second round heat featuring: Andy Black, Tony G, Kenna James, Roland De Wolfe, and Liz Liu.
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All In For The Premiership of Poker
When I was invited to London to compete in the Premiership of Poker, what impressed me the most was that the TV coverage was going to be broadcast in dozens of countries. So it was going to be a great chance for me to get some more international exposure. Poker is exploding abroad, especially in the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe and China, where ESPN is carrying the no-limit Hold ‘Em torch.
The Premiership works like this: 12 invited world-class players would each play six separate six-player “heats.” Points are awarded based on performance: eight points for first place, six for second place, three for third place, two for fourth place and one for fifth place (sixth place gets nothing). Each heat would be a random drawing, so that you could face the same opponent several times. For example, I drew Tony G (Shall we say that he is a famously “theatrical” player?) in five matches, and I knew that that could make for a highly combustible show. The players with the top four point totals would advance to the six-player finale, with their chip stacks to be 10,000 times their point totals. The players who finished in fifth through eighth place would then play heads-up matches, with two of them advancing to the six-player finale (making it a 16-week TV series).
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Shannon Kicks Behind!
A few weeks back, I went to pick up tennis star James Blake and two of his friends to take them over to the Bay 101 card club, in San Jose, for some poker action.
In my last column, I talked about how Blake had busted me twice, and then bluffed me in a poker session a few days earlier, sigh.
When I arrived to pick up Blake and friends, I was pleasantly surprised to see that actress Shannon Elizabeth was with him. Elizabeth knows her way around a poker table, and she has spent quite a bit of time on the poker tour. In fact, when we walked into the Bay 101, the first thing that we saw was a “Shooting Stars” World Poker Tour poster with Elizabeth’s picture on it. (On March 9, Elizabeth and other top poker pros and I will be playing in the World Poker Tour Shooting Stars at the Bay 101, with a $10,000 bounty on our heads. If you bust one of the shooting stars, then you collect $10,000 in cash.)
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Tennis, And Poker?
No limit Texas Hold ’em is big on the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Tour these days. Many of the top players, their coaches, trainers and staff have several weekly poker tournaments. They do not play high stakes or even moderate stakes, but rather relatively low stakes tournaments where a lot of pride is on the line. And these guys can play the game!
In February, the ATP rolled into San Jose (my neck of the woods) for the SAP Open, and with it came Andy Roddick and James Blake. Roddick and Blake are not only the top-ranked American tennis players; they’re also ranked fourth and sixth in the world in tennis, respectively.
Recently, Roddick, Blake, Stu (Roddick’s friend), and I walked into the Bay 101 to play some poker. At 7 p.m., Roddick was to be part of the featured match at the SAP Open, with Blake to follow at roughly 8:30 pm. They had a few hours to kill before they would hit around together at 5 p.m. or so.
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Tunica, Miss., part 2
My editors told me that I should have kept part 1 and part 2 in consecutive weeks, but I couldn’t resist having the column about tennis great Andy Roddick, and the way that he won his own charity poker tournament, in the middle. Two columns ago (at www.philhellmuth.com), I was talking about my last-minute arrival in Tunica, Miss., early Sunday morning for the annual World Poker Tour event held there. I talked about how I felt compelled to be in Tunica for this tournament — to the point at which I chartered a jet out of Los Angeles at midnight Saturday night — because I sensed that I was on top of my game. By Sunday night, I was one of the chip leaders, and we had lost 100 players in the 308-player field. The tournament had a great structure — one that was first instituted by legendary tournament director Jack McClelland — that featured five 90-minute levels of play a day for the first four days. We all knew in advance that we would play from noon until about 8:30 p.m. or so — 7.5 hours plus four 15 minute breaks. This is a nice change from the old days (now we can make dinner plans!), when we would play from noon until 2 a.m., or later.
In any case, the second day started off fairly well for me, and I fluctuated between $65,000 and $100,000 in chips. In two nearly full days of play, I had been all-in only one time. In part one I talked about how I was all-in with my three 10s vs. my opponent’s three nines. Now, I know that I’m playing my best when I’m never at risk of going broke in a single hand. It is hard for an amateur to understand how difficult it is to navigate your chips so that you’re never all-in. It takes patience, cunning, timing, or, to sum it up, it takes “the right moves at the right time.” If you know whether your opponents are weak or strong, then you can make the right moves at the right time. (Check out my new poker course at www.blackbeltphil.com for more on this.) I do not usually play at that level, but I always strive to.
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