Potential in progress

Sometimes it's impossible to determine whether it's more intimidating to look across a room full of people who want your money, or across a seemingly endless expanse of felt at the one guy who wants everything in front of you.
In this room, in this flight, the intimidation seemed impossibly strong on both sides. World Class Players sat elbow to elbow with people who had never played in a live tournament. And under the din of shuffling cards and riffling chips, a trained ear could hear it humming: potential, an engine with more cylinders than syllables.


Mike and Glenn, experts of the floor

With controlled choas purring at every table, Mike, Glenn and the rest of their colleagues made the engine run as smoothly as it could. Careful players, straining against early bust outs, kept the tournament running longer than intended. Dinner reservations suffered the second greatest fate, falling only behind the 85 bust-outs that found themselves with more time to spend on the beach than they wanted.

The room popped with screams of anguish and celebration, and at some point, NBA star Rick Fox came in and signed up for some $20/$40 Hold'em. When that wasn't open, he sat down at a $100 Sit & Go tournament.

Who says poker isn't the great equalizer?

David Williams, second place finisher at last year's WSOP Main Event played strong all day, stacking up then stacking off to finish the day with more than double his startinig stack.

The man who bested him in the WSOP built a tremendous stack, in the words of one table mate "getting the respect he deserves." When his table finally broke, he ran into a massive hand and lost around half his stack, reportedly to John Smith, the current chip leader. Still, Raymer's sitting with more than triple his original stack.



Just about anyone who I've talked to who has played with Raymer has indicated he's an affable guy who doesn't mind offering advice to younger players. I think he made a friend in Jon Rasool, the young player from Toronto. Rasool is sitting on a shortened stack, but has survived until Saturday.

That's more than can be said for some of the better-known pros. Isabelle Mercier, Carlos Mortensen, and Tom McEvoy all busted out today. None of them seemed to be catching cards and their moves weren't working. Still, some of their fellow World Class Players are still in contention.



Josh Scheln (sdouble) found himself sitting next to WSOP champ Chris Moneymaker today after Moneymaker's table broke. Moneymaker spent most of the day stacking up at what was the de facto "featured table" because it was the closest table to the rail that hosted a celebrity player. Moreover, a TV crew from Nashville came down to profile him and spent several hours shooting b-roll of the table while Moneymaker chatted up his opponents.

By the end of the day, though, Schlen found himself faring better than Moneymaker. Both of them head into Saturday with decent stacks.

Try as I might, I couldn't help but gravitate back to the least assuming of the tables in the room. Table #1 also sat close to the rail, but wasn't home to any of the players that got the railbirds hooting. Still, I couldn't keep my eyes off a man the online players know as broomcorn.



Dan Alspach's shirt, a flowing mess of cat and kitten prints, drew my eye every time I walked by. I might've been able to avert my gaze if he hadn't been wearing a matching visor. When I kneeled down to check his stack, I made a joke about being familiar with his uncle. Then I noticed he'd amassed a stack bigger than forty grand and I decided I'd quit with the joking.

Toward the end of the final day's level, a whoop-hollar broke through the room and sent me hopping toward Table #5.



When I made it to the table, Maurice Hawkins was still in full celebration, good-naturedly mumbling "ship it."

A table-mate said, seriously, "I thought you were alseep."

I completely missed the hand, but I think Maurice was holding AKs and hit his flush on the river. Maybe the turn. He may want to correct me later. Two hands later he folded AKo to a small raise without blinking.

"Can't do it twice," he said.

As the final minutes ticked off the clock, I madly made my way around the the tables trying to tally a quick unofficial leaderboard (for all the good it did me). I ran into Seung Yoo who had just worked his way into third place with a stack of more than $41,000.




A buddy of his, in perhaps an homage to the movie "Swingers" said something to the effect of "Little boy's all grown up" and have Yoo a playful shake.

This, friends, is what it's all about: potential in progress. No one knows what the next few days will hold in terms of chips, cards, beats, and wins. Tonight, though, 116 players are going to bed knowing they are still alive.

And alive in the Bahamas is a good thing to be.

Good luck to all the Flight #2 players who start in just about ten hours.

Note: You might've noticed I disabled the comments section of the blog. While I'm a big fan of comments on the blog, the dialog here had degenerated into an anonymous forum for fourteen year-olds. Such is life in this anonymous ethereal world. While I'm thick-skinned enough to handle just about anything, there is something nice about decorum and honesty. Some malcontents just don't get that kind of thing. That is, I appreciate the urging for quick reports, but I'm not a big fan of the pseudo-sexual suggestions of the adolescents who happened across the blog after Mom and Dad went to bed. My thanks to the thousands of readers who've been keeping up with the blog so far. Your suggestions are welcome and I'll do my best to update you as often as I can. You can now send all flames, comments, and suggests to my e-mail box. At least for the time being. --Otis