Life’s a Bluff – The Poker Comic – Created by Frank Frisina & Ryan Estrada » DTPLife's a Bluff - The Poker Comic

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Dream Team Poker, My Crushing Defeat and Redemption and ‘The Greatest Poker-centric Web 2.0 Site Ever.’

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Well folks. It happened. I made my third trip back to Las Vegas and the WSOP but I had something more on my mind than watching the final days of the Main Event leading up to the November Nine. I was there to PLAY (and not get locked out…thank you event 4.) and I meant to kick some serious butt! Team Life’s A Bluff was a bust as Frank had to stay home to deal with some health problems, but I found redemption with none other than The Poker Diva, Liz Lieu, and her Team Chili Poker. For the first time in 6+ years of playing all manner and sizes of tournament poker…I was getting staked. Not only was I in what could easily be classified as the most FUN event at the WSOP (think BRACELET EVENT Mr. Pollack!) I was on a freeroll.

2009 Dream Team Poker – Matt’s Opening Table

When I walked in, I knew about half the room. For $560 bucks a person ($1620 a team, included jerseys) anyone left in Vegas who was not in the Main Event was there to clash in a team format game. Media Team champ Lacey Jones had brought her soul-crushers back and Top Finishers Team Pokerati were there as well. Poker media was there in full force with multiple teams from Wicked Chops, Bluff Magazine, PokerRoad, PokerNews, PokerListings, and about anything else that could swing a sponsorship, to compete for a Team 1^st Prize of $33,000 and an Individual 1^st Prize of $16,000. Pros were scattered about the landscape ranging from ‘Old Schoolers’ like Barry Greenstein, Marsha Wagner, Tom McEvoy and TJ Cloutier to young guns like Justin Bonomo, Adam Junlen, Bryan Devonshire and Jimmie Fricke. Other names off the top of my head include Jerry Yang, Jose Canseco, Eric Aude, Paul Darden, David Williams, Gavin Smith, Kenna James, Pam Brunson, Christina Lindley, Jon ‘PearlJammer’ Turner, Allen ‘Chainsaw’ Kessler, Michael Craig, Evelyn Ng, and Joe Stapelton. I was sitting with Lacey Jones and Men ‘The Master’ Nguyen and a real surprise, the President of Blizzard Entertainment. And no, I could not get a release date on Diablo 3. I tried, and I have video to prove it. Check it out.

Sadly, I busted out first. No, not first on my team, not necessarily first at my table…first. 6 hands in, I had played two hands, one big blind where I had to lay down flopped trip sixes to a four clubs on a river for 2200 of my 10k stack and then the killer then I checked back top pair holding AQ on the button to Men Nguyen (who had played 5/6 of the hands, raising 4 of them) then raised his bet when an ace hit the turn. He re-shoved and I tanked…I really did…then I called and saw his bottom set. GG Waldo, better luck next time. I quickly put on my camera and got the photos you’ll see below and on my Photo Dumpology on Flickr

Root for whomever you want...I'll take the hot poker players.

I had let my team down, I had gone out in 6 hads…I had given my chips to Men the freakin’ Master. I had let down two EXTREMELY hot teammates and the only thing I could do was ham it up with host Alex Outhred and laugh as I was lampooned my the poker world on Twitter. Sweet. Revenge was MINE when I won the ‘stealth raffle’ prize for our entry fee back and Team Chili Poker which finished second to last over all, gave our benefactor Liz Lieu all her cash back. And just like that…I didn’t suck half as bad as I thought! A huge thank you to Liz and Chili Poker for their support and for harboring a stray player on short notice…it made my series.

Since the series nights kept ending before midnight and I was pretty much on a sleep schedule that ended my day at 2-3 am and started at 10 am…I needed action. Watching Dr. Pauly toss limes just wasn’t cutting it so I wanted to find a quicky tournament or some solid action ASAP. And then I remembered good old Jeff at US Poker Directory.

Jeff, a fellow Midwesterner with a love of poker and wandering feet like mine, ran into a situation once that really irked him and he decided to do something about it. While in Chicago for a conference, he decided that he wanted to go play some cards. Looking online, he found some lists of rooms but nothing that ever gave him anything more than general info and nothing that ‘connected the dots.’ Basically, it became a grind to call every room on the list, hope to get someone that could help you and ask what was going on. Being very tech savvy and a big fan of user driven content on the web (or Web 2.0 for the initiated) his response was to build a site that could do it all and let the players rank the sites and keep things up to date. US Poker Directory.com was founded and now anyone can log on, log in and find any one of 500 brick and mortar card rooms all on one integrated Google map. With a familiar Zoom and a quick click you can drill down to your location, click on a room, read what games are spread at what limits, see when the run tournaments (all updated by users) and read actual player reviews and rankings written by registered users on the sight. No calling, no guessing, no waiting on hold. Not only can those users give lurking searchers like me direct reviews/insights on anything (great comps, low rake, hot waitresses, avoid the tuna…) but now they can even upload photos and videos to the site so you can SEE if the tables are clean, the carpets non-moldy and the players are THAT inbred. (I count that as a plus, but that’s just me.)

With this trusty tool in front of me in the media room I ran a search, found that the Venetian had been spreading 6-12 HORSE for most of the Series due to sudden player demand and quickly hopped out of there like a jackrabbit on a Barry Bonds vitamin regiment. The only call I had to make was to the Venetian not to check the game…but to get my name on the list to shorten my wait time. Who knows, in the future, you might just be able to ‘click’ your name on from your mobile phone, but for now, you’ll have to settle for having all your poker room info in one place while you are anywhere in the US. I guess if its not there…you can ad it. Looks like its only getting better with time. As a result of that search, I mauled some donkeys that insisted on playing Stud/8 like it was some hybrid of Hold ‘Em and Stud Hi and picked up 30 BB in one game rotation instead of waiting on a list and letting the chump in front of me reap the rewards. Consider these kind words my official ‘thank you’ Jeff. You have a hell of a site there that looks like it will only get better.