Roughly, what %age of people use protection at the WSOP?

At my local cardroom it is prob. about 1 in 50 but I'm wondering if it's more of an American thing.

LULZ! You better ask ceegee about needing to use protection in Vegas...

lot of STDs floating around your cardroom?

Yeah, I heard he needed one of those extra thick sheaths for his mobile phone.

Moar about when Boosted J busted. He struck as about the biggest non-drunk, non-rascal riding douche I've run into at the WSOP.

really? he didn't say much when he was at my table. he looks french, though.

Talking about Benjamine... I played a lot with him on day 2 and sat next to him at the FT, and he was a really nice guy all the way. I'd say he was by far the friendliest and coolest offline star player I've met during this WSOP.

Awesome. This paints a very pretty picture in my head. Ty.

I'd be nice and friendly too if FTP was paying me $500k/year...

http://www.subjectpoker.com/2011/07/ivey-benyamine/

Chips, there is a Q&A with PH in this months Pokerplayer (UK) magazine where he is asked about missing out 3 times on his 12th bracelet, obv being 3 handed and then HU with you is mentioned.

If you haven't seen it, let me know and I will scan it and email it to you or if you want I can post you the original mag when I'm finished with it.

ORLY?? Yes, please scan it. I'll pm you my email after I finish swimming... thank you!

What, boost Chips ego more with press releases and articles about his triumph?

He'd NEVER want a tangible copy of THAT!

So on Thursday, Dr. Razz finally decides to come to town; he and Osc were both staying at the Gold Coast, right next to the Rio. Dan was supposed to have dinner w/ someone who cancelled with the excuse of 'having to have an emergency meeting about what to do with all the Canadian strippers'. No, I'm not making that up, and no, it wasn't ceegee. I had had Craftsteak leftovers that night, so took him to the Sonic a couple blocks down on Flamingo, which I didn't know about prior to eating further down the night before w/ Soepgroente. Sonic blast FTW!

Staying at the Gold Coast was convenient, because Deuces Cracked was having their bowling party at the bowling alley there. I was invited enough between ceegee & soepgroente, so I showed up w/ Dan and Osc. Ceeegee, jeetorious, & Mustafabet joined our lane later. Osc insisted that the 2nd game was "spin-only", so I went from like ~120 to ~40, because i don't really know how to spin it. It was super fun, though, obv. Towards the end, a bunch of people were going to the Rhino; I ended up just going back to ceegee's to sleep since it was 2ish, I think. We were playing Chinese poker for a while since we had 6 people on the lane, which is a super fun way to kill time. I used to play Chinese on PokerRoom how many ever years ago for cheeseburgers and forgot how much fun it was...

I had dinner w/ Collin Moshman & his wife Katie & Ali Shoubber on Friday night & then proceeded to the Rio to actually play poker for the first time since the stud/8 event. They had Razz satellites running, which are awesome to play in as I've mentioned. I busted the first one I played in, which had 2 regs from Stars, I think, one of which was fisheye. I joined the next one, which had 7 of the 8 people do the $100 last longer! Dan was in this one, too.

I wanted to prop bet in this, so I got one guy to red flop / black flop me based on the 3rd street upcards. We started at $20, but he eventually wanted to go up to $50. Of course, this way, there are a fair amount of ties 8- and 6-handed, which were just pushes. He was actually the first person to bust, and he was having so much fun prop betting, he stuck around and kept doing it. Apparently I'm a nit, b/c he looked at me like I told him his dog had just died when i said that I was going to quit when it got down to 4-handed.

I got heads up with this older lady who kept making these awkward joking comments like "we can chop 50-50" when I was up like 4-1 or something and then I'd win another couple pots and she was like "okay how about 60-40". She didn't actually ask me to chop, but I wasn't going to anyway because I was like 100% to win since she was doing stuff like folding a low card into my J, etc.

The dealer we had was super, super cool. I think her name was Kay, and she had recognized Dan from dealing to him previously at some point. She actually knew all the stud rules, and she was quick and efficient, and hilarious.

So I take my lammers into the Diamond reg. room; Dan follows me since I'm his ride back to the hotel, and guess who's in the room getting paid out? Mr. Phil Hellmuth! I yell out "HEY PHIL!" with a twinge of obnoxiousness, and he turns around and we talk for like 2-3 minutes. He said that he had been catching a lot of **** from his friends for my "you played better than I thought you would" comment, and I laughed and said I sincerely meant it as a compliment, but could see how that perhaps could have been phrased better.

Time for the razzament on Saturday!

just had the idea of making a trip report of my vegas trip... then gave up on the idea out of simply remembering some of the ridiculously ******ed degen days i had. =p

haha, I dunno if you youre being facetious or not, but I was wondering the same thing. fwiw he wasnt THAT old, probably mid 30s to mid 40s, but was definitely talking like a 2p2er.

nice trip report so far, will definitely read the rest!

ha, noone took the bait. it was funny b/c you called SGSpecial "sorta old".

isn't that what makes a great trip report?

I know exactly how this would look and sound. Now I'm tilted.

Is that it? Are we done? Did somebody give Chips the week off?

This thread was nothing short of Epic!!1 We all ought to re-read it every year before the Series.

And btw, if I haven't done so already, Congrats! on a great achievement. Richly deserved imo.

I know exactly how these would look and sound.


No, wait, I can't be sure about which hat Eric would be wearing.

really? hoyas hat ldo but probably cardrunners for this time and place.

thank you! sorry I haven't finished the last chapter or two, I've had a lot going on. I will try my best to start the razzament tomorrow.

in after trying my best!

So, the razzament is particularly fun because way more 2p2 people are there for it. SGspecial, camz, hi? (who i guess was there for the $1,500 Eament, but I think that was an accident, actually...), some guy in a Bruins hat who said he wasn't 10_kyle_10. Obv everyone else who was already there anyway was playing.

My first and only table on Day 1 has professorben show up late or perhaps get moved to it early. I barrel the river one hand and he calls and then tweets about how a bracelet winner tried to bluff him, then I own his soul by c/r a 7652A on the river when he had a 7653x. I decline to tweet about it. Since the point of the razz tournament is to just mess around the whole time, I give Ben a ton of ****. My favorite extended scene is where I ask him if he's going to be in any more TV commercials, and he's like 'wtf'?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e04SjNGlfUo

He has spiky hair, so I remind him that he was the guy in the Axe commercial and proceed to pepper him with questions about it for the next five minutes. The whole table was LOLing and it was awesome. Another hand w/ Ben, we each had a 6 or 7 to start, make it 5 bets on 3rd w/ an 8 in the pot, who obviously goes on to win it.

I wondered at this point if it would be more EV in a Razz or E game to have yourself and another competent player at a table with 6 fish b/c you guys can jam all the fish in in multiway pots rather than having one table with 7 fish to yourself. Anyone else have any thoughts about this?

There was one table of death to start, which had micvanbob, jkwizzle, and ceegee all sitting next to each other. I'm glad I wasn't over there!!

Dan and Hi? were also at the table next to me, where there was this drunk guy drinking and wanting to play prop bets. Noone at his table wants to do it, (including Dan who asks me if I'll book his $20 prop bet action ) He's being louder and more fun than I am, so I have to step it up a notch.

Some other people were at my table, including SNACKERS from FTP, but I guess noone was famous enough for me to remember who they were, except for some semi-famous pro I thought I knew who it was, but was not, who was nitting it up and bitching at us during the prop betting. I think he was of some Arabian descent.

Prop betting, you say? It got written up in Poker News, who was 'kind enough' to stop fawning over Tom Dwan to come over and cover the table:

So, the prop bet, as planned by the other table, was that whoever brings it in gets paid by everyone else. But **** that, b/c I never bring it in:

In the 2010 WSOP razzament, I was in the 2 seat, w/ Greg Raymer in the 6 seat, and I was chatting him and the rest of the table up while winning a lot of pots. Every time I'd get paint, I'd shout "KING ME!" like you would in checkers, and, inevitably, there'd be a king or something behind me and I wouldn't have to bring it in. It was awesome. So I had the 2 seat again at my table here, with plenty of time for "KING ME!" to work. So everyone else is on board with the bring-in collecting, but I insist that the bring-in has to pay. Why would I want to root to have the bring in and get paid? I guess it reduces variance, but **** it, I just won a bracelet.

So naturally I end up bringing it in every hand, although it was way cooler to make the bring in pay b/c then everyone was ganging up and rooting for the current high card and/or everyone else involved in the bet to stay the bring in instead of one guy rooting to just stay the bring in against everyone else...

I end up reaching -$1100 in the structure PN accurately described, including a hand where I bring it in, some guy accuses me of being streaky w/ the b/i, so I say **** you, jackpot hand, double it, and then BAM, insta K. So I want to chase my losses, and rejackpot the next hand. I get a 7, so that's pretty good, AND THEN NOONE ELSE CATCHES HIGHER, so I have to be the first triple up, on a jackpot hand no less, for -$320 on that one hand alone. FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I end up "only" losing $960 or so by the end of the night, but ****, that sucked...

Obv we were having a lot of fun and yelling and stuff, so the TD comes over at some point and asks why we have all this cash on the table. I assume you're probably not supposed to prop bet and/or have cash on the table, so I snap him off immediately with, "for tipping the cocktail servers", and he laughs and lets us be.

Since I was always bringing it in, I ended up w/ like $9k in chips, up from $7500, but the avg. stack was $14k or so going into day 2...

haha, fwiw that drunk guy was matt waxman. I was at the table between yours and durrrr's, was quite distracted between staring at him and all the noise from your table

In stud8 I think it's always a good idea to have another good player at the table. In fact, when more stud8 ring games were spread, I'd be at a table thinking it was full of pigeons, and I'd notice that one of them would always be betting correctly. His boards would be weird, but he'd always be extracting the max. And I'd think, that's strange, but then realize he had better reads or was simply playing several levels above me. So I learned to watch for skillfully aggressive bettors, and watched them carefully to see what they were doing and if they were coming after me.

But anyway, nothing can be more frustrating than to be at a table, get run over by the deck, and collect exactly 1 or .5 bet on each round because the other direction is afraid his Ks full isn't going to hold up. Next best thing is a complete maniac, or an internet HE player who isn't afraid to try and 5-bet himself out of trouble in a stud game.

Any more prop bet stories and we may have to organize a craps run next Series...