Stories/impressions of name pros at the WSOP?

[MicroBob]

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he bought my friends and I some drinks and said "see, nobody from PartyPoker would ever do this."

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On the PPM cruise my GF and I were sitting at a bar on one of the decks upstairs with maybe about 4 other dudes. Some representative from party walks up (about late 20's perhaps) and buys a couple round of drinks for 'the gang' and then proceeds to listen to various criticisms about the site.
He was only taking the most 'diplomatic' line (errr...the party-line). I had much that I could have said of course....but 2 other drunks kept bugging him about "how do we know that we're even playing against other people and not against 'the house'".

[rheaume]

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Phil Gordon: I thought he would be a lot more biiter than he is, based on the Bay 101 WPT performance from a year or two ago. On the contrary, he's convivial, smart, funny and an absolute dead ringer for Nicolas Cage.


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PG is a very nice guy. I ran into him at a bar in Georgetown about 6 months ago and he bought my friends and I some drinks and said "see, nobody from PartyPoker would ever do this."

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a few months ago im standing in the poker room in the palms waiting for a nl seat. phil gordon slowly walks by the poker room on his cell phone, but he wasnt even talking. they were taping celebrity poker (*vomits*) in a few hours. my friend dave and his girlfriend are there with me, but they don't know much about poker or "famous" players. when i see phil i say to dave "duuuude thats phil gordon." and kinda thumb in his direction. didn't scream it or anything like a little fanboy. phil just ignored me. lol

looking back now i should have shouted FULL TILT POKER SUCKS! [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

and that's my phil gordon story.

[rheaume]

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It's merely from his attitude and the stories I've read from people on here who've encountered him, including his childish blowup at the WSOP this year.

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what did he do at the wsop ?

[MicroBob]

First day there - I'm walking around trying to find the registration desk. Don't even know how close I am to the playing room.
Sit down on a nearby bench to take a phone-call on my cell and the first 'name' player I see is Juanda walking out of the playing room.
Two kids (about 13 years old or so) come running after him and ask for his autograph and he stops and chats with them and signs their WSOP programs for them.

I couldn't help but think about how just 2 years ago there's no way kids that age would have any clue who this guy was (2.5 years ago I had never even heard of Hellmuth or doyle Brunson much less Juanda).
Juanda appeared to be very classy in the way he chatted with the kids which coincides with my general impression of him just seeing his play and interviews on TV.


Huck Seed - Kind of fun to play with. Dry sense of humor of course. (sat with him for 6 hours in the July 1 $3k event).
Looked like he had just rolled out of bed though.
Very aggressive.
Pushed all-in with his 95s on flop of Q78 thinking that the flop missed his opponent (Syracuse mike I believe). Opponent said 'I have you this time finally' and calls the all-in and turns over set of Q's.
huck said, "I don't think so. Watch this. Here comes the 6."
Bang! The 6 comes on the turn for his inside-straight.
Weird.
huck didn't last much longer in the tournament after our table broke but everyone who was there was talking about that hand.

Tom McEvoy - Not as personable at the table. Seemed a little bit grouchy but not too bad. Wasn't 100% certain it was him at first.

Johnny Chan - (played with him for about 10 hours in the main-event...I busted out about 10 minutes before he did). fairly fun. Kept commenting about the ESPN cameras "see...they just come around here hoping to see me bust out."

showed the 'love' hand that he folded (96o) when he got raised out of his big-blind. Got a good laugh from the table.

complained about the cold a lot. some player had his sister buy him a sweatshirt. I commented that Johnny was probably going to send the dude's sister to buy him one too. Johnny looked at me with a 'that ain't a half-bad idea' look and then dug into his pocket and gave $100 to the guy to give to his sister. Later we got to comment that at this rate we would be the only table with everyone wearing matching grey WSOP sweat-shirts.

It was also kind of weird to see Johnny with his trademark 'stare up and to the left' thing that he always seems to do (as he also did in Rounders when Mikey is watching the video of him slow-playing the nuts for example).


Saw Johnny the next day in the glass-room playing in the big-game at the Bellagio. I was at a 15/30 game where I could see in very easily. Johnny had his bare-feet propped up on a chair as he was contemplating what to do against Hansen or Giang or whoever he was up against.


Johnny also was gracious enough to sign some autographs for those who came up to him at the table during the breaks when he clearly would have preferred to be just taking a break.



One last story with zero name pro's -
First hand of the $3k event on July 1. This is my first time in Vegas basically and my first ever WSOP event.
Only 4 people at the table as the others (including Huck Seed and Tom McEvoy) had yet to arrive.

UTG and the 2 blinds see a flop of 679 (I had folded).
UTG and SB are betting and raising each other on this flop and eventually get all-in and I couldn't believe it.
first hand of a long event and these guys are going crazy.

Flop - 679
SB has 99 - UTG has T8

UTG's straight holds up and he's the CHIP LEADER!!
I look around to the other tables just to guage the reactions for when the dealer shouts out 'Seat open, Table 45!' and the reactions were of the expected "WTF happened over there??" variety.

My first hand at my first ever WSOP event was pretty memorable.

UTG guy looked like he was about to have a heart-attack after that.
We were seated next to each other and had a good time, albeit a tough one, as we were sandwiched between Seed and McEvoy.

[sekrah]

In the Omaha event, Greenstein got trapped by Simon Trumper.. Trumper put a beautiful check-stall-raise with the nuts and Barry G threw a big hissy fit for Trumper taking so much time with his raise with the nuts.

Created a huge scene at the Rio. Nearly everybody there said Barry G was completely out of line.

This guy can't stand losing.

[Sponger15SB]

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He was only taking the most 'diplomatic' line (errr...the party-line). I had much that I could have said of course....but 2 other drunks kept bugging him about "how do we know that we're even playing against other people and not against 'the house'".

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I love it, you're on the [censored] party poker million cruise and you STILL ask people who work with party if they employ bots to take all your money.

[rheaume]

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In the Omaha event, Greenstein got trapped by Simon Trumper.. Trumper put a beautiful check-stall-raise with the nuts and Barry G threw a big hissy fit for Trumper taking so much time with his raise with the nuts.

Created a huge scene at the Rio. Nearly everybody there said Barry G was completely out of line.

This guy can't stand losing.

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if that's true, that's ridiculous.

[DesertCat]

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In the Omaha event, Greenstein got trapped by Simon Trumper.. Trumper put a beautiful check-stall-raise with the nuts and Barry G threw a big hissy fit for Trumper taking so much time with his raise with the nuts.

Created a huge scene at the Rio. Nearly everybody there said Barry G was completely out of line.

This guy can't stand losing.

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if that's true, that's ridiculous.

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It's not exactly true, there is a long thread on it if you want to search. Trumper put on quite a show, he went at least four or five minutes (Barry said 10 minutes) counting chips on the river before re-raising all in.

I don't agree with how Barry took it, but it doesn't make him a bad person. It was a frustrating beat, and clearly put him on tilt. Simon and Barry talked it over later and made up. Sekrah on the other hand, wants to use it as proof that Barry is a jerk who always throws tantrums when he doesn't get his way. This of course runs counter to virtually every other experience ever posted about Barry on this site.

[Miles Ahead]

Here's a link to the whole story (both Barry's and Trumper's versions):

Espn WSOP Blog

Short story: Trumper trapped and busted Barry out. Barry got up and left without saying anything and steamed about it at home that night. Barry said he thought Trumper had stalled for 10 minutes with the nuts and then slow rolled him when he turned over the cards, which (if Trumper had done that) would have been a complete dick move. Barry came back the next day and complained to the tournament director about the 10 minute delay and the slow rolling, and then went and confronted Trumper. The other players who had been at the same table -- Huck Seed and a few others -- backed Trumper's side (which was that he took 2-3 minutes to raise and did not intentionally slow roll him at the end, but instead was just sloppy in the way that he turned his cards over).

Barry later sat down with Trumper, said that he concluded he was wrong after talking to the other players and hearing their side of the story. BG apologized, and they agreed to put it behind them and get on with the business of playing poker.

Sounds like Barry had a bad day, but I wouldn't declare him the devil on that basis.

[unit63]

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well you've got the tall guys, but poker has a lot of real short guys too, which is not always particularly obvious on tv

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Maybe the shorter players feel the pressure from the vertically well-endowed. I saw Men the Master several times over the course of the WSOP, always wearing the same pair of sweet stacked-heel alligator boots which gave him an extra three inches, bringing his total to about... 62. 65 if you count the cigarette too.