Lost Episode 6: Event #13, $1500 Pot Limit Holdem

I started this day in a Pot Limit Holdem event. About midway through my second down, Greg "Fossilman" Raymer, winner of the 2004 main event, plopped down in a seat that had been vacated by an early elimination. He had more chips than anyone at the table and played very fast, raising and playing lots of pots. After I pushed to the next table, there were a couple of times that I heard "all-in" and idle players would congregate around his table to see the action. He busted out pretty quickly, and I recall asking the dealer behind me about the play, but I didn't put anything in my notes. Suffice it to say that his chips are in play during the early levels.

I did have my first floor call on this day. I had some early action behind a player that still had cards. There was a question about what would happen if the contemplating player called or raised and my explanation didn't satisfy the players, so I called the floor to back me up. The rule here is pretty straight forward, but it always seems to generate some debate.

After a couple of downs in this tournament, my table was broken and I was redirected to the restart of the 6-handed tournament that I was dealing the previous day. They were approaching the money bubble, so action was getting tense. I solved that pretty well, though. On my first hand, I collected the antes and then burned a card and snap, snap, snap, laid down a flop - without having dealt the players their hole cards. The first player after the button immediately said "I raise" and I realized what I had done seeing that he, nor anyone else had any cards. It was a bit embarrassing, but I laughed at myself and everyone seemed to enjoy the mistake and chided me a bit for a few hands. No one was ugly about it. I had a mental block a few months back where I did this several times in the first tournament that I deal utilizing antes. There is a bit of muscle memory that is triggered by bringing in those antes, I guess. Anyway, this didn't happen again, and hasn't since, thank God. My second table had Eric Seidel, but he busted after just a few hands. He ran a good sized stack into the chip leader, and got it all in after the flop with only 4 outs against him. The turn brought one of them .... no waiting. A few notable professionals that I dealt to in this event were Randy Holland, Eric 'Sheets' Haber, Matt Brady and Alex Jacob.

After four downs in the short-handed tournament, my table broke and I was redirected to a restart of the $5k seven card stud tournament that had begun on my off day, so this was the third day of that event and they were down to just four tables. Lots of big name players were still in this event, and it was my first time dealing stud in a real tournament setting. It was really exciting and stud is by far the easiest game to deal. I dealt to Chad Brown, Barry Greenstein, John Cernuto and Paul Sexton during my downs in this tournament. In all, I managed to pick up 11 more downs on this day.