Still No Car or House, Chopping, andTournament Directors

I still haven't found where I want to live or a car, but I am hopeful by the weekend I'll have both accomplished. If anyone out there knows of a nice furnished condo or house for rent that is available immediately, send me an email. I am most likely going to get a hybrid car, and am looking at the various models available.

I busted out of the 5k on Tuesday, in an unusual way for me. For the first time I can remember I kept picking up big pairs, by that I mean QQ or better and lost most of the hands. One hand in particular I started with average chips and picked up AA in the small blind after about 6 players limped in front of me. I made a large over raise and got one caller. The caller, played almost every hand and won almost every hand at the table. He called many a raise with Q 4 off suit and other such interesting hands and kept winning. In my case the flop came 9 J Q rainbow and he had K 10. So I then played the 7pm nightly 1k buy in. That went better, we got down to 4 players and did an even chop, which amounted to 2^nd place money for all. I am not a big fan of chopping, however there was 265,000 chips in play, we were all around 65,000 and the blinds were 5,000/10,000. So with 6.5 big blinds per player it was a luck fest. In this situation chopping made sense because there was no more skill involved, only luck. In single table satellites I am often in a situation where you are heads up or three players remaining and am asked to chop. To chop or not to chop, that is the question. To those of you unfamiliar with "chopping" it does not involve in axe, at least not a real one, but is taking the prize pool and dividing it in some way that the remaining players agree upon. Since we were all about even in chips, and with first place being $24,000 and fourth was $5,000, we all agreed to $12,000 each. This amounted to 2^nd place money for everybody. If the blinds were smaller I would have preferred to play it out and take my chances. In the single table satellites I think you need to also look at the blinds and chip stacks and see if there is a reasonable amount of play left or not. In the winner take all format it is lousy when you have played well for a couple of hours and are down to heads up play with similar chip stacks and monstrous blinds where luck, not skill will determine the outcome. I do always try to be fair in calculating the percentage each player gets. In fact In the 2.5k event where I finished 2^nd a few days ago we never talked deal until right at the end when megabyte or gigabyte or whatever his storage capacity is, just won a big hand and had over 90% of the chips, I offered him an even chop. For some reason that escapes me he declined.

I wanted to end with a note about tournaments, tournament directors, and their staff. I talked about the Bellagio group a few days ago and got word from a few other places that felt I left them out. I am pretty sure I will upset someone with this next paragraph, but there are several places that I myself as well as the majority of other players I talk to, and get emails from seem to love, and others let's just say seem to not love. I judge places by how well run the events are, the facilities that we play in, the hotel and it's amenities, attitude and ability of the dealers and staff, and overall feel. The overall favorites that I have been exposed to (and this is in no particular order) are Bellagio, Borgata, Fallsview, and the Crown Casino. I will elaborate more on this next time and I invite readers to email me with their choices and comments about various tournament venues and I will put together a list of the good, bad and ugly. Oh, and let me just add as far as tournament directors go the ones at the above mentioned places are all excellent, as is Cherie over at the Commerce, and I have to include Matt Savage (even though he is a golf hustler, and if you play with him his real handicap is 9, not the 18 he claims!) or else he will text message me crying like a little girl, but he really is an outstanding TD, okay Matt, there I said it.

The Oracle

For more information on Roy Winston or Joining Full Tilt, you can visit his website: www.oraclepoker.net or send him an email: [email protected]