20
The rest of Team Israel (Krantz, Whitelime, and Flawless_victory) arrived in Copenhagen 2 days ago. We’re renting two rooms in the Hotel Skt Petri, the nicest hotel in Copenhagen. I’d gotten into Copenhagen before the others so I was staying in my own room and when I checked out I met up with the others in one of our 2 new rooms. They’d been in town about 5 hours having flown in from New York and were already collectively up 180k,up 75k at 25/50 and 105k at 50/100 on the Euro sites. Must be nice. The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. We took a break from playing in the afternoon and walked around town to see what’s going on. We found the Pedestrian Mall, the main shopping center in town. The four of us were way too lazy and tired to actually go shopping but seeing 3 people who have just won 60k each going window shopping is always a bit ridiculous. Every time we passed a store that featured $10k watches in its windows we would eye all the watches and whitelime would basically have to be talked out of buying 6 of the damn things. We walked into a Hermes store and I saw a pair of jeans I might want to buy later so I looked at the tag to see what size the jeans were and flawless, thinking I was looking for the price starts yelling across the store “Don’t look at the price!! If you look at the price you end up not justifying buying the stuff, I just buy it and try not listening when they tell me the total charge!” This gets me interested in the price and the jeans are $1,000. Maybe when I come back to the store when we’re actually buying stuff I’ll listen to flawless….
Anyway, day 2 we all wake up in time for breakfast. I think this might be the first time that 4 professional poker players have all managed to wake up before noon on a poker trip. After breakfast we went to the hotel’s fitness center and worked out. I think it’s very important to go to the gym and stay relatively fit, because years ago when I was a fledgling poker player I remember hearing Phil Ivey say that he stays in good physical condition because it keeps him mentally alert:
Full Tilt Poker Game #4996246640: Table Ivey Deathmatch - $500/$1000 - No Limit Hold’em - 21:56:29 ET - 2008/01/25
Seat 1: Phil Ivey ($276,372)
Seat 2: seda1 ($123,499.50)
Phil Ivey posts the small blind of $500
seda1 posts the big blind of $1,000
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Phil Ivey raises to $3,000
seda1 calls $2,000
*** FLOP *** [3h Td 6h]
seda1 checks
Phil Ivey bets $4,000
seda1 calls $4,000
*** TURN *** [3h Td 6h] [7c]
seda1 checks
Phil Ivey bets $12,000
seda1 raises to $50,000
Phil Ivey has 15 seconds left to act
Phil Ivey has requested TIME
Phil Ivey raises to $164,000
seda1 calls $66,499.50, and is all in
Phil Ivey shows [Kd Ks]
seda1 shows [9h 8s]
Uncalled bet of $47,500.50 returned to Phil Ivey
*** RIVER *** [3h Td 6h 7c] [Kc]
Phil Ivey shows three of a kind, Kings
seda1 shows a straight, Ten high
seda1 wins the pot ($246,998.50) with a straight, Ten high
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $246,999 | Rake $0.50
Board: [3h Td 6h 7c Kc]
Seat 1: Phil Ivey (small blind) showed [Kd Ks] and lost with three of a kind, Kings
Seat 2: seda1 (big blind) showed [9h 8s] and won ($246,998.50) with a straight, Ten high
lolz
After the gym, Krantz and I set up appointments at a local spa to get some massages. Our concierge gave us a couple gift certificates that Krantz told me were worth $50 each, and we’re thinking “awesome. whitelime booking their most expensive concierge service is already starting to pay for itself.” We go and get our massages and mine is awful. My masseuse is Swedish and commutes to Denmark every day (the countries are by each other, in case you didn’t know) so I was expecting a good massage but she basically just rubbed my back lightly for an hour and it was ridiculously boring. Anyway, when our massages are over Jay and I rock-paper-scissors to see who has to pay the bill. We both throw scissors, then we both throw rock, then I beat his rock with my paper and the friendly cashier looks at us confused and goes “What are you guys doing?” Jay explains that since he lost now he has to pay, and the women tells us that our gift cards covered the whole bill. I guess she must have been pretty confused that we were loitering waiting for her to give us the bill, and then randomly started playing rock-paper-scissors and having Jay pull out his wallet afterwards.
We get back to the hotel and while the others start playing a ton of poker I begin my 4 hour coaching session that I had scheduled with 2 new students. It’s been a couple months since I did any coaching and it was nice to get back to doing it, especially since my two new students are pretty good poker players so we can talk about some more complicated stuff. After I’m done coaching, I go with the others to “Geranium,” a restaurant that’s absurdly delicious. We had a gourmet 7-course dinner where basically we had 7 opportunities to make fun of whitelime for being a vegetarian because our food kept on being so delicious and his food was basically the sides that came with our course, so he just had these pathetic little plates with like a potato croquette and some parsley which would be noticeably lacking the giant piece of delicious veal we were eating.
When we’re done eating, we go to the restaurant’s lounge and have some coffee. When the check comes (it’s about $1000), I suggest that instead of credit card rouletting for the tab, we try new system where I whisper in whitelime’s ear a starting point for counting. Then Krantz picks a number and we count clockwise from the starting point and the person who we land on has to pay. Whitelime is to my right, flawless is to my left, and Krantz is across from me. Now, Krantz has it in for me because every time I’ve ever rock-paper-scissored with him for a bill or for $1k a pop or whatever I’ve always crushed him (I actually am a preternaturally good RPS player and everybody rolls their eyes when I say that but I basically never lose and all my friends believe me after they seem me totally crush everybody). I whisper in Emil’s ear, as quietly as I can so Krantz won’t hear, that we’ll start counting with Flawless. I tell Krantz to pick a number and he says “1″ and I’m so happy that I owned Jay again that I immediately and giddily blurt out “HA! YOU PAY!”
Krantz looks confused and goes “What? NO WAY!!!” Whitelime tells him, “Yeah man, we’re started with Flawless and you’re the first person to his right, so you pay.” Krantz just says “GODDAMNIT!!! I THOUGHT I HEARD ARIEL SAY FLAWLESS. I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO OWN HIM BY SAYING 1 AND MAKING ARIEL PAY BECAUSE I THOUGHT WE WERE GOING COUNTERCLOCKWISE!!!!!!!” The culmination of all of Krantz’ frustration at my constant ownage of him in paying situations leading to him trying to screw me and losing $1000 instead is just such a rich event that all 4 of us are practically on the floor laughing. In between giant belly laughs Flawless points out that Krantz, having known the starting point for the counting and probably a bit unsure about whether we were going clockwise or counterclockwise, could have just said 0 or 2 and been 100% sure that either Flawless or Whitelime would have had to pay. But instead he took the risk that we were going clockwise and he’d have to pay the $1000 just to have a chance at screwing me over. Heh.
One other funny thing that involves me “owning” Krantz is that during day 2 the others lost 200k negating their winnings for the trip and they were playing such huge fish at nosebleed stakes and losing that Krantz went into his “we’re not sure if he’s crazy or not, but he sure seems to be temporarily totally deranged” moods. He jumps out of bed after going to bed around 2 a.m. and just goes “I HAVE TO CHECKRAISE SOMEBODY!!!!” He then logs onto his computer in the corner office space we have set up and goes to play somebody HU 10/20 NL. I’m in the other section of the room and immediately jump on one of the tables to observe. Krantz calls a raise and the flop 457 with a flush draw and Krantz check/calls. The turn comes a T and I enter in my chat box, logged in from whitelime’s account, “Pr1nnyraid is going to check/raise the turn. He was planning on playing one hand and check/raising any turn” and wait to press enter until IMMEDIATELY after Krantz check/raises the turn. Krantz, having already lost 140k on the day, explodes at me and is cursing me out while I”m just cracking up because I’m sure that I just took Krantz to a whole new world of tilting. He jammed a blank river and the guy folded and he won the pot anyway.
Anyway, that’s our trip so far. I’m in Denmark another 7 days (the other are staying until the 29th, but given that that’s my birthday and it only comes once every 4 years, I’m going to avoid spending it flying across the Atlantic and am going to try throwing a party back in NYC), so hopefully I’ll have more to post. On the trip I’m up 6k, including this gem of a hand. I was coaching a student and sitting at some empty $10/20 HU tables (I normally 1 table some HU on the side while coaching) when this fish sits down with $1700 and goes up 2k on me before I whittle away his stack some. He’s insanely passive preflop (47/18) although he has reraised me a couple times. So when this passive player limp reraised me and we got it in, I was curious to see what he would have. Enjoy the results:
FullTiltPoker Game #5318028777: Table Snub (heads up) - $10/$20 - No Limit Hold’em - 12:35:20 ET - 2008/02/19
Seat 1: DaEvils ($2,788)
Seat 2: guesswho3 ($2,550)
guesswho3 posts the small blind of $10
DaEvils posts the big blind of $20
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to DaEvils [Kc Kh]
guesswho3 calls $10
DaEvils raises to $80
guesswho3 raises to $240
DaEvils has 15 seconds left to act
DaEvils raises to $720
guesswho3 raises to $2,550, and is all in
DaEvils calls $1,830
guesswho3 shows [Kd 4h]
DaEvils shows [Kc Kh]
*** FLOP *** [Jh 3h Jd]
*** TURN *** [Jh 3h Jd] [3d]
*** RIVER *** [Jh 3h Jd 3d] [Ah]
guesswho3 shows two pair, Jacks and Threes
DaEvils shows two pair, Kings and Jacks
DaEvils wins the pot ($5,099.50) with two pair, Kings and Jacks
guesswho3 is sitting out
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $5,100 | Rake $0.50
Board: [Jh 3h Jd 3d Ah]
Seat 1: DaEvils (big blind) showed [Kc Kh] and won ($5,099.50) with two pair, Kings and Jacks
Seat 2: guesswho3 (small blind) showed [Kd 4h] and lost with two pair, Jacks and Threes
