By EdmondDantes on February 14th, 2008 (more posts by author)

On Tuesday, I rolled down to the Commerce around 2:30p and hunted down shaundeeb for a lunch at the Arena Bar and Grill, Commerce’s sports bar. I'd never met SFD and braced myself for a conversation without punctuation, but he surprised me with complete sentences and cogent thought. A few minutes into lunch, LakeofFire showed up and then David Mosikian, Player Relations god for the Commerce, wandered over and, as I found out later, picked up the tab. I wish I had known; I’d have ordered a couple of extra entrees to go.

After lunch, I signed up for the $1,000 NL event (Event #19). I didn’t look like they were going to get that many entrants, but by the start there were well over 25 tables going. The official count was 268 entrants with a $72k first prize.

Like many of the prelims, the structure was pretty quick—one hour levels, but 3000 chips and 25/50 blinds to start. I never really got anything going throughout the tournament. I definitely had some decent hands AA (3 times), KK and flopped trips and two pair (twice) but never could get paid off I finished about 50th when I shoved UTG with KQo with <10BB. KQo < ATs…nice playing with you guys.

High points on the day…

- Men the Master two seats to my left at my first table. He got down within a chip or two of the felt when he shoved with top pair, bad kicker, 3rd nut flush draw on the turn. He immediately doubled back up when a guy called his push with K high and redoubled when he insta-called an all-in with A2s. Deeb put it succinctly in the text message. “lol asians” No caps or punctuation, of course.

- Dinner in the Eden restaurant with SFD, SirWatts, grafyx and Lake. Grilled salmon…tasty…and good for you!

- LakeofFire flaming out in typical spectacular fashion, zooming up to several thousand BBs within the first two hours and then blowing it all before the dinner break. I thought he’d dusted the stack off on two hands, but as he corrected me, he had way too many chips to do it in just two hands. Three then, whatever.

- Meeting JP OSU of "I got mugged for 30k in Australia" fame on a break.

- Grinding through 80% of the field and not getting paid despite three pairs of pocket aces, a pair of pocket kings, flopped trips and two pairs ad nauseum because I’m a grey-haired nit and only play the nuts, obv.

- Moving to shaundeeb’s table short and having him mock me with a “Nice stack, sir!” and having him shake his head in disgust when I was shown the rail with my KQo < ATs.

- Other notables in the event: David Pham, Jennifer Tilly, a guy directly to my right supposedly never played a hand of poker before today but “is really good at blackjack.” You’ll be fine, sir. The games require skill sets…

Anyway, I should have some better stuff to talk about next week. Adanthar and nath are allegedly coming out. we're doing some filming with some of the guys on Monday and I have another deal that looks like it might just close later in the week. Plus, deeb's in a room with my credit card on file, unsupervised...