I Can Dodge Bullets Baby!

Somehow I forgot the best line of the WSOP thus far, from Phil Hellmuth, after making the tremendous laydown in last week's episode:

"Honey, I was supposed to go broke on that hand! Except they forgot one thing: I can dodge bullets baby!" - Phil Hellmuth, to his wife.

I strongly encourage everyone to use the line "I can dodge bullets baby" after every suckout as you rake a pot to put your opponents on tilt.

ESPN's coverage of day 2 of the Main Event featured one of my personal favorite players - Layne Flack. In an early hand, we see Layne limp with 7-T. The button calls, and the SB calls, but the BB is apparently so fucking terrified of Layne that he mucks - in an unraised pot! Seriously though - who can blame him? Layne Flack is a stud.

The flop is A-5-6 rainbow, and the SB, holding 3-5, checks to Layne, who bets 1200. The SB CR's to 3200, and Layne makes it 10k to go, raking in the pot as the SB gives it up.

Coverage shifts to DBOTY (DoucheBagOfTheYear) Barry Paskin - doing his annoying, inappropriate screaming routine again. This time a player nearby finally says "Shut up!" and Barry quickly and loudly replies, "You shut up! I'll play my game, you play yours." This is the point where I think the floor needs to step in and tell Barry to shut the fuck up. Later, Barry Paskin is forced to change out of his lucky David Beckham jersey, because it apparently smells too bad! He whines "Tell me in the rules where it says something about smelly," and complains that the officials are just trying to take him off his game, but he is forced to change, and promptly gets eliminated, prompting Norman Chad to erupt: "I'll make some noise! YES YES YES YES SEE-YAH!"

We get a glimpse of Dan Harrington goading an opponent: "It's worth calling - you'll be on TV. Even if you LOSE you'll be on TV." Jeez... I'd hate to try to figure out what Action Dan wanted me to do in that situation...

Sammy Farha executes the TILT-inducer of the tournament by taking pictures of the people he busts! AIYAHH! What a great move for implied tilt odds - the only problem is that the person is eliminated already, so Sammy can't capture any of the TILT odds. He cracks a guy's flopped set of aces by turning a flush, and then says "Wait - let me get a picture of you." It is unclear if Sammy also kicked the guy in the junk.

Joe (Hendon Mob) Beevers and Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi join Layne at the TV table, and the Grinder plays this interesting pot: We don't know the blinds, because ESPN's attention to actual poker details sucks, as we all know, but I'm guessing they are 750-1500. Mizrachi finds KK and raises to 4000. Joe Sartori, an amateur, calls with A-J.

The flop is T-J-T with two hearts, and the Grinder bets out 4k. Joe raises to 19k, and the Grinder thinks before re-raising to 39k. Sartori comes back with an "all-in" that I believe was 90k total.

Grinder thinks for a while, and finally calls! I thought it was an interesting call, since Grinder's re-raise to 39k seemed to say "if you raise me here, I'm giving up the pot - I'm convinced you have a ten." Grinder is getting roughly 2-1 pot odds, but it seems he was committed to this hand all the way - his re-raise to 39k was more of a value raise than a feeler raise.

In the second hour of the broadcast, one of the first things we see is Greg "Fossilman" Raymer coming to his table wearing a pair of tight khaki shorts. Yikes. This stirred up immediate memories of the discussion Bones and I had about Raymer's role in the Extreme Poker League. Bones pointed out that Raymer would CLEARLY need to wear a one-shouldered-singlet, in the style of former WWF superstar Earthquake. The similarities are downright eerie...

Howard Lederer runs into a seemingly endless succession of opponents who do not yield to his pressure, including Steve "the Weaz" Dannenman. Howard gives the viewers a free lesson in consistent preflop raise amounts: when he decides to raise, he always makes the same raise: 3xBB, regardless of the quality of his raising hand. In a featured hand, howard bumps the 1k-2k blinds to 6k, and Dannenman calls with 6-8 (aka: The Vortex) in the BB. The flop comes K-Q-J, and Dannenman checkraises the Professor's 7500 flop bet to 30k. When Howard mucks, Dannenman immediately stand up and calls his friend, sounding like quite the douchebag as he boasts on camera about his nicely executed bluff. We then see a brief flashback to Howard Lederer's 1987 performance at the final table of the Main Event, where he looked like a cross between Grizzly Adams and Bob Villa.

John Juanda puts the bad beat of the day on Paul "the Truth" Darden, when Juanda, as a 19-1 underdog to Darden's set, sucks out to scoop a big pot. We then return to Layne's table, where we see him with stacks and towers of black T100 chips. This is an interesting observation because it likely means that Layne is dominating the preflop action by stealing a lot of blinds and antes.

Fossilman carries his ample racks of chips to a new table, where Mike "The Mouth" Matusow has already set up shop. Matusow is surprised to see Raymer, as the two had butted heads in a confrontation at last year's WSOP (Matusow had taunted Raymer after a few big pots last year, and Raymer then refused to shake Matusow's hand when Mike tried to apologize) that left Matusow on the rail, and led to Fossilman bringing home the bracelet. ESPN, loving a good story, has plenty of canned interview footage from both players, and ends with the Mouth saying "We're friends, I respect him a lot," to which Norman Chad quickly counters: "They're not friends. He doesn't respect him a lot. Trust me."

The oddest segment of the week is the shot of Adam Friedman trying to decide what to do with the second nuts. He has a K-x flush, and his opponent has moved all-in. Friedman agonizes for what appears to be several minutes, before calling, and seeing that his opponent does indeed have the ace high flush. Friedman collapses into his chair and appears to actually CRY! Now, seriously, there is NO CRYING IN POKER! Listen Adam, we don't know the details of how the hand played out, because ESPN picks it up only when the all-in move is announced, but I'm pretty fucking sure calling with the second nuts in that situation isn't worth crying about. What would TJ or Doyle say about crying at the table? In the Extreme Poker League, Doyle would have come running out of the chip cage and clubbed Friedman across the back of the head with his crutch. Then, Doyle would have stood over Friedman's crumpled body and uttered a line like "Now you have something to cry about." Finally, Mel Judah would have come out and shaved Adam's head, as he lay unconscious!

until next time,

Kid Dynamite