To Play or Not to Play ?

This place wears everybody down eventually. You'd hardly recognise that confident lot that breezed into town about six weeks ago thinking and acting like it was going to be so easy. Their own mothers wouldn't know most of them now. At least the noise level has gone down. The free drink poured out by online sites have taken a heavy toll on those left standing. Jesse May was at several of these parties. He's a useless drinker but he tries his best, you can't ask for any more than that. He got to talking with a guy at one of these bashes a few days ago. The guy was the editor of a poker magazine. Jesse had a few and complimented the guy on the content of his magazine though he'd probably never read it and certainly didn't care. He politely asked the guy how he found the competition in Europe, especially from Card Player Europe. The guy said it was no problem and that although the current editor of Card Player Europe was very good, the original editor had been horrible. Jesse agreed. He said that Brendan Murray was indeed very good at his job and that he, Jesse, was the horrible guy.

Not speaking English can be a bit of an inconvenience here at times. A Spanish online qualifier was doing very well in the main event and had his stack up to 150,000 at the end of day 2. A representative of the site he qualified on met him the following evening at a craps table and commiserated with him on his elimination. With the language difference and all of that it took a while for the representative to understand that the guy thought he was on a rest day, although he hadn't rested very much, starting his day at the swimming pool before playing a tournament at the Venetian just to get a little more live practice. As the Venetian tournament was a two day event I'm not sure what his plans would have been if he made it to day 2. Or maybe he thought he was on a series of rest days. When the dust settled they found out that he got a better result in the tournament he didn't play as he eventually found out that he made the money ($22,000) with four antes to spare. I wish I spoke Spanish because I'd love to find out how he felt about his day.

After being knocked out of the main event I joined a bunch of guys at the bar in the Gold Coast. The conversation came around to how the hell you can get your money back as quickly as possible. Scof very helpfully told us how one of the legendary road gamblers had found a solution to this problem several years ago. Whilst losing the last of his money he got slow rolled. He'd taken as much as he could and caught the slow roller with a hell of a punch. This was frowned upon by the security guys though not necessarily the rest of the players. While they were handcuffing him they got a bit over enthusiastic and dislocated his shoulder. Happy days! A trip to the hospital and a lawyer's office later our hero was back in business with a bigger and better bankroll. There is a life after the World Series.

Visit PokerTrillion.com to read more about Padraig Parkinson at the WSOP.