A couple of week's ago I sat down with the Poker Grump as he got ready to play in the WSOP Main Event for the first time. You can see the post with that video right here. On his first day I had a chance to go down and get a little footage of him at Poker News labeled a "Table of Death".
Earlier this week, I had a chance to sit down with the Grump and talk through his Main Event experience:
You can also read Grump's blog posts about his big adventure here. They are all definite good reads! Thanks very much to the grump for taking the time to sit with me on these occasions and share this experience.
This last weekend was Fourth of July and while I got a good amount of poker in, the "main event" as it were was getting out with Mrs Flops to celebrate the Fourth. I guess you could say we did three Fs: Food; Fireworks and ... Foolishness. C'mon, get your minds out of the gutter!
When word hit a little over a week ago that the Poker Grump had won Dan Cates' Main Event drawing I knew I'd want to have a Grumpy guest appearance on the vlog and the Grump graciously obliged me with some of his time the other day. Before we get to the video, some backstory for those who might not be familiar.
Cates is one of the most recent (and perhaps the last) online poker wunderkinds. Cates established himself as a successful high stakes heads up no limit player online and was reported to have amassed over five million dollars in online winnings in 2010 alone. Had Cates spent much time playing live, you might ask. Well, not in the US at least because Cates accomplished all of this before turning 21. In fact, the 2011 World Series of Poker is Cates' first run at the poker world's premier series since before then he hasn't been of age to enter any events.
To commemorate his first WSOP main event, and as a means to give back to the poker community, Cates decided to hold a drawing where one lucky winner would join Cates in playing the main event and would do so on Cates' dime. The only qualifying factor was that the winner had to have never played the WSOP Main Event before. When the time came for the big drawing, Grump's ticket emerged from the fish bowl, and now he is in the midst of preparing for the big one. It was fun to sit down with him and hear him talk about the experience:
The Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas has undergone a pretty substantial renovation recently, along with that they have reopened their poker room, and the other day they held a bit of a promotional tournament for the room. The tournament was hosted by Brad Garrett who has a comedy club at the Trop as well. It sounded like a good time, so Mrs. Flops and I headed out to play:
p.s. Make sure you pay attention towards the end of the video as Mrs. Flops makes a very quick appearance!
It was a really fun event, seemed like pretty much everyone was there having a good time and not taking things too seriously. Well there was the guy who seemed to get a little perturbed when I three bet him preflop a couple of times, but I actually had the goods both times - at least enough of the goods that I would have been OK with a call. Once we got down to the final table everyone was joking and laughing with each other - it's nice when you can play the game and legitimately have fun with the other players.
I'm also really wishing success to Wally, the poker room manager and his staff. Everyone their had a great attitude and you could really see the effort that they were putting in to make the room the best experience for the players that they could. They do some nice little touches like having a Keurig coffee machine in the room so everyone can get fresh coffee if they want as well as setting out plenty of bottles of water for the players to just grab at their convenience. They also run tournaments two or three times a week that add a hotel package as an overlay to the winner. The package includes bottle service for one night at the Nikki Beach Club, a night in one of the hotel suites and breakfast for two the next day.
