Alrighty Mr. Mike here's a few stories for ya. Start ya off with some amazing hand stories. These are some of the most amazing hands I've ever seen.

Hand #1 took place in the 2nd chance event. It's a $340 buy-in and ya start with $5,000 in chiips. It's only the 1st level, blinds are $25-$50. I'm walking around doing my normal think and I hear some ooohs and aaaahhs which is pretty typical. So much so that normally you don't pay that much attention to it and you write it off as typical TV "Holllywood" Poker. But this time what's unusual is I see the whole table standing up. Not just a guy or two or three. The WHOLE table. While I'm walking over guys start taking out their cameras, pulling out their camera phones, snapping away pictures. I get over there see the hands on the table. There's three players involved and peeked at the board: Qs 8c 10s, Js, 8s. I'm listening to the banter and then glance at the hands. Apparently it was four ways to the flop, with player A in the SB, Player B under the gun, Player C on the button and Player D in middle position. There was a bet on the flop which got Player D to fold. The turn card of Js got everyone to check and on the river Player A checks, Player B bets, Player C raises, Player A checks raises all-in, Player B goes all-in and Player C calls. Player C flopped top set of Queens and makes top full house on the river, Player A flopped top pair Queens with a straight draw with the 9s in his hand and makes a straight flush on the river, Player B UTG had turned a Royal with the AKs in his hand. Needless to say after tripling up in the 1st level, this bozo didn't even make the money.

Hand #2 will be on TV, it'll probably be the most replayed hand in poker for years to come. It's the main event Day 1A and were somewhere around the 4th level. There's a kid in my section we call Red Raider, cause he's loud, has red hair, always wheres a white tank top, and has a raider tattoo on his arm. This hand is heads up. Our hero Red Raider is in the blind and is defending a button raise from our soon to be deposed villain. The flop was As Qd 9c, 10d, Ad. Similar to Hand #1 there was a bet on the flop by button raiser and a call from Red. Check, Check on the Turn. On the river though Red bets out around $12,000. The guy on the button has around $50,000+ and takes all his stacks just shoves them all-in splashing the pot. Red stood up, cause that's what you do on TV, and points at the chips and the pot and says "I call whatever that is" and turns over a Royal, KJd. The other guy is in disgust. He buttoned raised with Aces, hit his ace on the flop and rivered quads and still got sent to the rail in the main event. Thanks for your $10,000 donation sir!!! Have a nice day.

Gotta love the runner, runner nut flush and the gutshot call on the flop. Obviously Red isn't going anywhere on the turn with the nut flush draw nd the already made straight.

Keep the stories coming. Also, let me know which events to watch for you on the TV tables. My buddy was next to Helmut for a long time and expects to get some pretty good TV time.

Pretty sick. I think that I must be the only person that has never gotten a RF live.

The one thing that really stands out that is really different from previous years is the special treatment the "name" players are getting vs the everyday Joe's. They virtually get away with murder now. Ever since the Jamie Gold series, they are allowed to virtually do whatever they want. The one incident that really shows you how much power the players have now vs the people running the event was at the final table this year of the H.O.R.S.E. event. I missed the actual outburst, but I did watch the final table for a few when it was done to 3 players, Scotty Nguyen, Erik Lindgren and some other no name guy. Scotty was freaking hammered. I mean absolutely sloshed. Slurring his words, couldn't walk a straight line if you gave him a double yellow line. Completely trashed. While I was there he was ordering another beer and somebody in the crowd yelled out "go scotty, drink it up" and he turned around shouted back "are you kidding? this is like my 20th beer today." Well apparently after I left, which was 4am, the floor guy cut Scotty off. Scotty went ballistic on the guy, cussing him up and down, yelling at him "do you know who I am?" "I don't think you know who you're dealing with!" and just more beligerent stupid stuff like that and the floor guy didn't even have the balls to give him a penalty for it.

You yell at me, you're getting a freaking penalty. I don't give a damn who you are.

Which reminds of an incident I was involved in. I got called over to a table and the dealer says "Card Down" and when I get over there a guy at the table next door hands me the card and says it landed on their table. So I'm like what? He's like ya, this card just landed over here from that table. I'm like ok then, and can't wait to hear this explaination. So ask the dealer how the card got over on the other table and before they could tell me, the perp tells me he just banged them on the table and they accidentally flew off the table. So I got more details of this "banging of the cards" and my fellow floor boss comes behind and says you gotta talk a walk, and I agreed and told the guy, "ya you gotta talk a walk". He was a young kid with tats everywhere and those hoop things in his ears, thinks he's from Africa. He looks at me and says "You're not gonna do me like that" and I said back to him "Oh yes I am, I am gonna do you like that, you're gonna have to take a walk" and he goes, "well I want my money back then". I'm like you can go do whatever but right now you're walking. So he gets up and leaves storming off before I can let him know when he can come back. Usually when you give a penalty the players ask when they can come back or hang around or storm off and come back. But this guy does neither. He runs to the cashier and tells the cashier that he got disqualified. Next thing i know I got my boss breathing down my neck saying that this player says you disqualified him and of course I'm like It's raining men! Hallelulah! It's raining men!? NO! So my poor boss now has to smooth things over with this 20yr kid over a simple penalty. After that all the staff was asking for updates on the kids status in the tournament and of course we finally busted him around 20 minutes later. HA HA HA. Dumb ass. Don't throw your cards! Don't pound your cards into the table so they fly off! Just turn them over like a normal person!

Note to self: Tell the story of final table "No Deal" and Final table "Hippy Kid"

More awesome stories. I can never hear too many good poker stories. My friend has some good ones, sitting with Helmuth for days. It was funny cuz my friend was on break and he said "dude, I almost busted Phil. I could tell he was sooooo close to shoving". My friend had AA and Phil had AK. So, I was reading WSOP updates at Bluff and found a clip where the hand occurred. Phil apparantly ran immediately to find his wife and said "honey, they tried to bust me, they gave me AK and gave him AA and I got away from the hand, but I lost $20,000". Was obviously making sure she knew how smart he was to get away from AK. I texted the whole story to my friend so he got a good laugh.

Not sure if all the pros are that way, but my friend also said Phil was completely "hollywood" anytime the cameras were around and then he was as quiet as can be when they left most of the time.

I was reading in the updates online where Hellmuth had a complete meltdown at the end of Day4 I think it was. They gave him a penalty and he had it overturned. It sounded like they really read him the riot act before overturning the penalty. Any details on what went down there?

Got to play in the home game last night with my friend who finished high in the Main Event and it was really fun to hear some of his stories about Phil and the other players. He said Phil plays really odd, min raising from UTG with hands like A6offsuit and tries to get people to fold by telling them how strong his hand is, etc. He pretty much talks in every pot he said. Consistently reminding everyone of how great he is, lol. He said the whole table laughed at him often when he kept telling them he had to "tone down his greatness" so as not to intimidate people out of playing pots with him.

Having played with my friend so many times, it still amazes me that he can do that well in such a huge event. His favorite quote is "it takes two things to be good at this game.......brains and balls, and I got one but am working on the other". I think it's a "color of money" quote or maybe Jerry Maguire or something like that. It's funny anyway. He is a talented player, but my goodness is he ever a loose cannon.

I believe this is the hand after he took a bad beat, a two outter on the river, and then he stomped off and throw his glasses across the room. Not exactly sure. But there was a hand where he took a beat and lost a lot of chips with something like 4-5 tables left. Not sure of the specifics as I was already given my papers to take the rest of the tournament off.

So for all of this Series I ran the 2nd chance AKA Nightly tournament and there were quite a few interesting final tables. If you're familiar with poker, specifically tournaments, almost always there's some kind of deal made to take ensure that the luck doesn't affect who wins most of the money. I had one final table where there was a deaf guy, a guy who only spoke spanish from the dominican, and an all-american white boy. They tried and tried to make a deal, but it was so hard because the deaf guy didn't know what was going on and the dominican guy only spoke broken english. Another table was similar, English, Spanish and German. Neither table ever got the deal done.

But one tournament stood out in this respect. The art of deal making. I remember a tournament I ran in N.O. where there was a 13 way chop. 13!
If you've ever played a Harrah's event before then you know that the staff is not allowed to help facilitate, be privy to how the chop will be divided, or in any way influence a chop. So while chops still happen, it is much harder to do where everyone involved will agree to it.

In any event, on this one night we were down to 13 players and what we had left in player makeup were 12 caucasians and 1 african american. It was getting late around 4:30am (tournament starts at 7pm) and we had a good turn out of 300+ players, so there was a lot of chips in play and it was going to take a while to play it out. So someone at the black guys table mentioned a chop and he (the black guy) started the lobbying. Let's do a 13 way chop! C'mon. They ask how much a 13 way chop, etc and like clockwork the players are going to go on break so they have a lot of time to talk chop. They lose one player and talk 12 way chop almost the whole break. They don't get the deal done and we resume.

Now the black has a good size chip stack at this point, probably 2nd-3rd in chips. Every time they lose a player he mentions the chop. Let's chop it 11 ways, they get to the final table, let's chop it 10 ways and so on. Now all this time he's been getting widdled down and keeps getting rebuffed each time they lose a player. Finally he loses a big pot and doubles someone up and he loses over half his stack. He starts crying and crying about why they won't chop and how he's getting screwed. He virtually stops playing and wants the table to talk chop. So the clocks running but play is pretty slow as they talk and talk and talk. My boss comes up and asks what's going on and I tell him they're talking chop. Well it takes like 10 minutes off the clock and we get the cards back in the air as they still can't get a deal done.

With the cards back in the air my boss asks what's that all about and I tell him how this guys been trying to get these guys to chop since it was 13 handed. He watches play for a while and then comes back to me and says, these boys ain't going to chop until this guys busted. I was like, "You think?". Sure enough 9th gets busted, no deal, 8th gets busted, no deal, 7th gets busted, no deal, the black guy gets busted 6th for like $700 bucks....... DING DING DING.... DEAL DEAL... The handshakes start, good playing, good playing, they all start telling each other. They didn't even let the guy get up from his chair before the deal was done. They each walked with $4,000+!! LOL So sick.


Another quick story, that I don't really have details about, as I heard it 2nd hand, has to do with one of the final table players in the main event. I don't remember the kids name, Marquis I believe. Anyways, apparently he was supposed to be on campus somewhere studying for his college degree during the world series. Was getting calls and talking to his parents on a regular basis, telling them yes mom, yes dad, I'm studying hard for my exams and no I'm not gambling or anything stupid like that. I guess his parents are real hippy-types and dispise gambling or any other kind of risky investments of that nature. So my source was helping him count up and stack his chips for the final table (10 handed still), when everytime the cameras came around he became very aggitated and disappeared and ducked the camera guys every chance he could. So she asked, what the hell are you doing? They need to get your picture and he was like "NO!" I can't let that happen, and she was like "what????" why not. So told her his story of how he's supposed to be off at college and NOT PLAYING POKER and if his parents find out they're going to kill him!

LMAO!! Amazing! Your getting ready to play for the biggest prize in the history of any type of sporting event and you don't want your parents to find out your playing poker!!! LMAO!!!! Just tell them your guaranteed $900,000 and um yeah, you'll pay them back for those couple years of tuition. I think they'll get over it. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

So when all this was going on it came out that the only person from his family that knows he's in the Main Event at the World Series of Poker and that he's made the final table and is guaranteed $900,000 was his sister. That is, until the next day............... Because his face and name were plaster right on the front of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! Uh ya kid. Sorry but um...... Secrets out. You better make that phone call or sit your parents down and tell them how you've been studying poker real hard at school.

I've actually never participated in a chop but had some offers too. Online, it seems like guys are just too difficult or have too big an ego. You just don't have the same personal touch as live. One of the times I had 3-4 guys wanting to chop and it was for a decent amount ($4000 each or something like that) and I had a sizeable chip lead, so I wanted $7,000 and the other 3 nitwits kept offering me like $5,000. I said, "pass" and they all said karma was going to get me. I won and took $9,600 and told them all to kiss my arse That was my last big tourney win, however So, maybe karma did catch my smartarse. Most of the tourneys I play are online. I generally play cash games live and tourney's online.

I always try to play tourneys when in Vegas because the Venetian and Bellagio and a few others have a really good structure. You can buy in for about $300-$350 and win a decent amount. I have played a couple of these and finished just short of the final table twice (12th and 11th). Both times I went out was with Aces. Lost to KQs and 66. UGH. Story of every poker player's life. Losing with Aces. I think someone should write a book titled this

At this point in my poker career I can still say I've never lost with Aces when I've made the money or even at a final table. Knock on wood.

Actually I had a first happen to me in Vegas this last time. For the first time ever I shoved all-in preflop with QQ vs KK. That's over 11 yrs of tournament poker and I have never done that before or had that happen to me. Odd.

Definitely amazing that you haven't lost with Aces that late in a tourney. I've lost with them all sorts of ways, although it's getting easier these days to get paid off with Aces, due to the aggression of the players. You can limp with Aces in late position and get some young internet junkie to push on you, etc. Sometimes that backfires and I don't considering misplaying Aces, losing with Aces. The last time I got busted, the guy knew I had aces after the flop and still called off his stack, knowing he had at most 6 outs. Just said, this is a terrible call....... and crippled me when he hit his miracle. First, he called a 4x raise preflop with 66 from me (under the gun). Then when he flopped a gutshot he went ahead and called my allin. He asked me about 5 times what I had and told me he had 55 (board was 4-3-2 rainbow). So, I finally said, "if you have 55, I have at least two of your outs" and he did the quick math and said "you have aces?". I said, "what do you think I'm raising with under the gun?" So, after he called he said "you got Aces?" and didn't flinch when I turned them up. He was very apologetic when he sucked out and said he knew it was a terrible call but he wanted to either final table with a big stack (I was 4th in chips and he was 5th) or go home. Excellent plan. Play poker for 4 hours, then get it allin with 66 and a gutshot. Brilliant.

Sounds like the usual plan against the math geniuses. It's the same play with an AK. You know the other guy has a pair and you just pray that its QQs or lower so that one pair will win. I can't say it was a bad move, cause the guy knows what he's up against and the pay off is there if his hand hits.

It tend to do this with more than 6 outs though. I like to have at least 10 or more and I have to be sure the guy is going to commit his whole stack regardless of how the hand plays out (betting pattern). If he doesn't commit his stack then I still win because that means they folded to my play.

Note to self: Craziest decisions of the tournament

Yes, although I am not happy with the end result, I am happy with a guy putting his tourney on the line with 6 outs. I'm just as happy to have a guy put his tourney on the line with a flush or straight draw and those guys hit 20-30% of the time and take me out. I don't mind having my money in as a 70-80% favorite I really don't like racing and try to have the stack to avoid these situations, but it's going to happen.

I haven't tracked it, but I think the hand I lose with more than any hand when racing is 99. I lose to all sorts of overcards, so I have pretty much quit getting my money allin preflop with those turds. I think I have a better win percentage with ducks, lol.

Wow, just completed watching the $50K H.O.R.S.E Championship on my DVR. Scotty was as big a donkey as I have ever seen. Can't believe Layne Flack was acting as bad as he was too. The directors need to do something about that type of behaviour, as it only turns people off from such a great event