Lost Episode 11: Event #25, $2000 NL Holdem

This was surely my most memorable day from the 2007 World Series of Poker. I have so many notes that I am going to break this day up into two blog entries. I started out in the $2k No-Limit Holdem event, but I drew a table that was very high on the break order, and I had a decent feeling that I wouldn't be in this event very long. I was in the area behind the main stage and feature table that is used for restarts of the previous days events.

My first table featured Gavin Smith, who quickly became one of my favorite poker pros. Prior to this experience, my impression from his few television appearances was that he was just a grown up class clown and lacked the maturity to be a top player. After seeing him in action, its obvious that he is not only quick witted, but very intelligent, reads and manipulates his opponents well, and uses humor and charm to his advantage at the table. Since that event, I have had the opportunity to watch him several times on television, and he has surely had a great year.

This was very early in the event, so stack size to pot size ratio was pretty deep. Gavin was playing a lot of pots cheaply and his showdown range was wide open. After a couple of pre-flop raises that overbet the pot chased him away, he started negotiating with the table. He suggested that for this first level, no one raise pre-flop. Of course, this should give him a positive expectation, as his experience and ability to read/outplay the collection of amateur players after the flop would give him quite an edge. Surely some of these guys would recognize this, right? After a few hesitations, but no clear rejection of the idea (a couple even embraced it), he dialed up the charm and made his case for the proposal, even asking me directly if it was ok. I told him that, if serious, the entire conversation bordered on collusion and that I was trying to ignore what I was hearing. I asked him if he would like me to call the floor, and he laughed that off and said it wasn't necessary, but then followed it up with a "if no one else raises, I won't either" pledge and seemed to get general concurrence from the table. To my amazement, it worked, right up until the last hand of my down, no one raised pre-flop. When the streak was broken, Gavin and a couple of others gave the guy a pretty hard time, accusing him of reneging and chiding him for not being a team player. The guy showed his pocket aces when he got no callers, but that didn't earn him any reprieve and the table chatter continued as I pushed to the next table.

Early in the Gavin Smith down, he was querying the entire table about where they were from and sort of sizing up their experience. It turned out that it was the young guy on his right's birthday, and he'd just turned 21. It was his first WSOP event, and first real casino poker tournament. The conversation naturally turned to Steve Bilirakis, who in winning the first event of the series, became the youngest bracelet winner at 21 years and 9 days old. As the table encouraged the young guy to break the record, and set the bar so low that no one else could do more than tie him, Gavin suggested that what he really needed to do was celebrate and start drinking. He offered to order the table a round of shots, and when a couple declined, he declared that after the dinner break, he and the young guy would go toe to toe and Gavin would continue to buy as long as they were both in the tournament. I have no idea if that actually happened.

One of the players started asking Gavin about his wild prop bets and he described an elaborate point system bet with Joe Sebok and Jeff Madsen (who won 2 bracelets in 2006) in which each would select certain events and based on their individual finishes amongst themselves in those particular events, the lowest ranking person would have to wear a jester suit to the main event. Since the series was about half complete at this time, they already had some of the events completed and he felt confident about his status, and he said that they had a buy-out clause that he felt was high enough that he could afford, but that they might not want to pay. Pretty funny stuff. When asked about his most obscure prop bet, Gavin said that he currently had a $100,000.00 bet with Adam Morrison (an NBA pro with the Charlotte Bobcats, who had been a college star at Gonzaga and in a Bill Walton sort of way was almost as well known for his long hair than his abilities) over who would cut their hair first. Apparently it had been in effect for several months already, and Gavin was certain he had a huge advantage as he could continue indefinitely without it affecting his poker play, while Morrison, at some point, might have to trim things up just so that it didn't effect his basketball play.

There was some discussion about how fast hair grows, and then amazingly, Gavin spots a guy behind the ropes with hair down past his butt. The guy is about 30 yards away and Gavin starts to engage the table as too what sort of prop bets that they could make about the guy. First, they bet on the over/under of how long it has been, measured in months, since they guy last cut his hair. Then they try to establish an over/under on how much the guy would take to have his head shaved. They set that figure at $12k and Gavin takes the over. The discussion goes on for about 10 minutes and I turned to sneak a peak at the guy and notice that he has a rather professional looking camera. I began to suspect that the guy might be an event photographer and that Gavin had already met him and discussed some of these topics with him, already knowing the answers and insuring himself the winning side of the propositions. But, when he gets up to get the guys attention and invites him over for a chat, it becomes clear that it was all improvisational. Gavin lost the bet on length of time to grow the hair, but won the shave your head buy off, as the guy declined $10k, and initially declined $15k, but after some thought returned and said that, yes he would take $15k.

Before being redirected from this event, I also dealt to Dustin Dirksen, Hasan Habib and Dutch Boyd. I was then moved to the restart of yesterday's seven card stud hi/lo split event. More on that in the next post.