I am a hopeful person. I am optimistic to a fault. Ever in search of a good story, I pin my writing dreams on the skill and fortune of a select group of poker professionals. They spend their days trying to fade 13 twice, and I spend my days hoping they succeed. There are days like today that have such interminable promise that it's almost impossible to suggest that at least some fine story won't spring from the Amazon Room fountain.

It's days like today that I can simply mutter, "Oh, well."

As if to put a period on all of it, I walked up on Victor Ramdin as he got AQ in against AK in the today's $1,500 NL event. The flop brought an ace. Victor got up to leave. The turn brought a queen.

"Hey, look," I said. "A queen."

The river brought a king.

My attentions had diverted form the 2-7 event Victor was in also, so I said, "Oh, well. How are you doing in the other one?"

Victor gave me a look that made me wish I was somewhere else.

"Terrible," he said. "I'm out."

Victor Ramdin

Victor was gone before I had a chance to apologize for being the cooler. Eventually these guys will catch on and banish me from their presence during key hands.

After starting with an exceptionally good chance at some big cash today, we are left at this hour with the prospects of just one player. At the dinner break, Bill Chen remains in the Limit 2-7 Triple Draw re-buy event.

With 28 players remaining, Bill has an average stack and is just a few players off the money. Six of those players will make the final table, scheduled to be played tomorrow.

A quick story for 2-7 players on the spooky game Bill is playing: Before the dinner break, he stood pat with 7744x and bet in every round, figuring he was holding cards his opponent needed to draw. After his opponent drew at every opportunity, Bill took down the hand after his opponent ended up mucking the worthless straight he drew.

Or, at least, that's how I heard the story.


Bill Chen

I supposed if I'm going to pin my hopes on anything, it might as well be a guy who wrote the book "Mathematics of Poker." Otherwise, it's early to bed and early to rise for tomorrow's gambler's ball--$10,000 PLO re-buys.

That's bound to be a good day.

Update: Bill Chen pure bubbled the event in 25th place. Now, onto Sunday.