"We're So Far Out In The Middle Of Nowhere I Don't Get Cellphone Service"
St. Patricks Day Weekend, 2007
Tama, Iowa (70 miles Northwest of Des Moines)

Day One - Main Event Qualifier
187 Players - Top 37 advance to final

Registration.
Charlie, Robert, Brian, Gunnar, and I completed the registration process after about 10 minutes of confusion. There was nobody directing traffic in the crowded poker room and nobody to tell us that we had to fill out a form on one side of the room before getting in a line on the other side of the room. We finally all got our seat assignments and three of us were at one table and two at the other. It appeared that they were opening up tables for seating one at a time.

The Bee.
I think everyone was a little nervous before the event. We needed to shake off the nerves after four hours of driving and a convoluted registration process. Charlie chose to sit at the roulette table. The rest of us headed to one of the two bars in the town of Toledo, where our hotel was located.

This bar, Bumblebee’s, had the small town character that we miss out on in the metro area. The bar was pretty dead for 4pm on St. Patrick’s Day. The bartender was the owner, and he was more than happy to see us come through the door.

We chatted with the owner who had a striking resemblance to Paul Teutul from American Chopper. He admitted that he knew nothing about Texas Hold ‘em and went off on a tangent about how nobody likes to play pool anymore. 3 Bud Lights later we were walking out the door to a spin of U2’s ‘Beautiful Day’ on the jukebox.

Table 19, Seat 7.
We arrived in the poker room about 6-7 minutes after 5pm and they had already dealt the first few hands. Charlie Barnes was in seat 2 at table 19 and had arrived promptly from his roulette table. Blinds started at 100/100 and we get 10,000 in starting chips. My plan was to observe the tone of the table and wait for a good starting hand.

When a good starting hand came, Charlie happened to be in the big blind. I simply called as I didn’t want to get either one of us into trouble from the start. The flop comes and the board shows a top card of a 9 which isn’t great for my pocket pair of 8’s, but not bad either. Charlie checks… another guy checks… and I bet the pot size from the best position. Charlie calls. Other guy folds. Turn card comes out with a 2 and Charlie bets big. Perplexed... I fold.

My next good hand happened to come while Charlie was in the small blind. I raised with AT. Charlie calls. Big blind folds. Flop comes out A 9 4. Charlie checks… I bet… Charlie then check raises?

I fold, throw him a stare and he shows me his A 4. There are almost 200 other people in the room... let’s not fight each other. I’m fine with him having the better hand, just raise straight away and I will fold. Please don’t check-raise the guy you came down here with 15 hands into the tournament.

NOTE: I expressed my confusion to Charlie at the bar later on that night. He said he was just trying to get back a the chips he lost in the first hand (which I missed) and didn’t mean to pick a fight with me. He bought me a beer. All smiles.

Bad Call?
I won a couple small pots during the next hour... nothing too exciting. I look down and see AQs so I raise. The guy in the big blind was steaming a little from a previous hand and decided to go all-in for about 6,000. I call and he flipped AJ. He caught an A and a J on the flop and I got no help. I’m now down to about 4,000 in chips and thinking that might have been a bad call… not because of the hand, but because it was putting over half my stack at risk when I didn’t need to.

Big Trouble, Little Tama.
The blinds are now at 200/400 and I have about 3,500 left. Not feeling real proud of myself at this point.

I’m in second position and get AJ. Hoping I might be able to see a cheap flop I call the 400. Everyone folds and the small blind goes all-in. It is the same guy who took my 6,000+ from my previous hand. He subsequently lost the majority of it to another player on the last hand. He was a bit on tilt and he had just a bit less than my 3,500 so I had him covered… but if I lose I might as well walk to the door. I call.

He flips AK. I’m screwed. He was a cool guy so if I lose, at least I didn’t get knocked down by some jerk. Flop comes 8 10 ?. Turn shows a Q. I now have a snowball’s chance in hell of catching a 9 or a K for a straight. I have a 14-15% chance with 4 nines and 3 kings left in the deck. I river a 9 and knock him out. I apologize for the suck-out about 4 times but I know he can’t hear me. I can breathe a little with just over 7,000 in chips.

The Rush.
On the very next hand I began a much needed rush. Before I look at my cards I say to the people next to me, “I really hope these are bad cards so I can fold… I don’t want to get knocked out right after that last crazy hand”. I look down at pocket queens. I raised to 1,200 in first position. Everyone folded to the big blind who wanted to call.

I tell him, “I really don’t want you to call. I told you I didn’t even want to play this hand… but I had to.” He folded and I picked up the 600 more from the blinds.

Now in the big blind… we have a few callers and I check my Q8. Flop comes J 10 9 with no flush draw. I check my straight. Someone raises, the small blind calls and I call. The turn card comes which puts a flush draw out on the board. I bet about 75% of the pot size. Fold, Fold, and the small blind went all-in. I think he was a little irritated that I talked him out of the last hand. I call. He only had a pair of Jacks and I pick up a big pot.

Next hand in the small blind I pick up K3 of clubs. Couple callers and no raises, I call the half price 200 and the big blind checks. Flop is all clubs and I have a king high flush. I check. Two others check. The button bets. I call. All others fold. Turn is junk and I check. He bets big. I call. River is no help to him so I make a value bet hoping he doesn’t have an ace high flush. He calls. My flush beats his two pair.

Within the last 4 hands I went from being short stacked with 3,500... winning 4 pots… knocking out two players… and sat as the table chip leader with about 22,000.

Table 19 breaks up and I am a little happier than I was 45 minutes ago.

Table 4, Seat 5.
The staff had to cram 20 tables into a poker room that is only large enough to hold maybe 12 tables comfortably. It was like walking through Carbone’s multiplied by 3. There was no rhyme or reason to the way they numbered the tables. I walked around for 5 minutes trying to find Table 4. When I found my new table there was only one open seat right next to Robert Fleming.

200 seats in the room and I randomly pick the open seat next to Robert. I look over to where Charlie’s new seat is and its right next to Gunnar. At least we all have someone to talk to.

I see Brian Schultz walking around. He went all-in with pocket queens and got sucked out on.

Are you okay, Sir?
The new table looked at first glance to have a few semi-pro/pro players. I had seen a few of these guys at the last HPT tournament I played in 2006.

As soon as I sit down, Robert and the 75 year old guy on the other side of me start complaining about the man in seat 2 because he had called over a floor person for a ruling 4 times since they started. He apparently was being a pain in the ass and slowing down the game. To paint a mental picture of this guy… think 500lb. guy in sweat pants and a t-shirt that won’t cover his entire belly. Nice huh?

Over the next 20 minutes I began monitoring this guy because it was like watching a car crash. He was wheezing uncontrollably and his eyes kept rolling back into his head like he was going to faint. Given his physical structure I thought we might have the potential for a casualty at our table. When he got up from the table I asked the other players and dealer if they thought he was okay and if we should get him some help. One guy who seemed to know him commented that he had been here all week and played in all the qualifiers… he was just tired.

I don’t know how you can be a professional poker player. It is far from a glamorous lifestyle. Many of these guys will travel from casino to casino every week to play in a major event… a few guys I talked to slept in their car.

With the HPT events, a lot of these people will show up on Thursday to play the satellites to get into one of the four Friday/Saturday qualifiers. If they win a seat, they keep playing and attempt to sell any additional seats they win to other players. It’s the same idea with the qualifiers. They play in all 4 of the qualifiers in the hopes of winning more than one seat so they can sell a main event entry to someone who couldn’t get in through a qualifier. Then they’ll play the main event.

There is the potential to play 40-60 hours in 10 satellites, 4 qualifiers, and the main event without ever winning anything. That’s a net loss of about $4,000. I don’t like playing poker that much.

HPT Structure.
I find the Heartland Poker Tour a very well run event. I can appreciate having to set-up in new unfamiliar facilities all the time and the issues that must arise. They do a real nice job of managing a field of potentially 800-1000 players over the 5 days they are on-site.

The one reservation I have about the event is the betting schedule. I understand the need to get through a large field in a short period of time, but it can make for an “all-in” fest once you get to past the 300/600 level.

Players start the qualifiers with 10,000 in chips and start with blinds of 100/100. The main event starts with 15,000 chips. 30 min. levels. Nothing wrong here… pretty standard. The lowest denomination chip on the table is 100. Levels move from 100/100, 100/200, 200/400, 300/600… and then here’s where I have a problem. Then next level is 300/600 with a 100 ante where the cost per table cycle more than doubles from 900 to 1,900 chips.

As a general rule, the ante in a flop game should accumulate to be the value of one additional small blind. With a 10 seat table at a 300/600 level with an ante of 100, we now have a pool of antes that is 1,000… larger than the small and big blind combined. At this level the ante should be 30 which is not possible when the lowest denomination chip is 100.

When I played in my first HPT qualifier in Mille Lacs, we had 100 people in the event with the top 20 moving on. I had a huge chip stack when we were down to 40 players. I couldn’t catch a decent hand for two rotations around the table and I became short stacked very quickly with the blinds at 4,000/8,000 and a 1,000 ante. Two trips around the table costs you 44,000. With this knowledge in hand, it becomes necessary to steal the blinds and antes about once per rotation to maintain a stack.

The other part of the betting schedule that I found frustrating in this event was that I was maintaining a chip stack at or around the chip average but was technically short-stacked. I define being short-stacked having 10 times the big blind (without antes). Once we hit the 1,500/3,000 level, the average chip stack was about 27,000… the average stack is technically short stacked… not good - leads to more all-ins and more bad players getting lucky. This theme stayed consistent as the tournament progressed. If you know this going in you can try to manage your stack accordingly, but what makes it unbearable is the addition of the aggressive ante schedule.

If the HPT guys called me and asked for my recommendation, this is what it would be (below) with the baseline parameters being that the 100 chip is the lowest denomination available and knowing they’ve got to get through a qualifier in 6-7 hours. It is still aggressive but the subtle change would give players at the middle levels more chips in their control.

HEARTLAND POKER TOUR SCHEDULE						MY RECOMMENDATION
Min.	Small	Big	Ante	Cost Per Cycle		Min.	Small	Big	Ante	Cost Per Cycle
30	100	100	0	200		30	100	100	0	200
30	100	200	0	300		30	100	200	0	300
30	200	400	0	600		30	200	400	0	600
30	300	600	0	900		30	300	600	0	900
30	300	600	100	1,900		30	400	800	0	1,200
30	400	800	100	2,200		30	500	1,000	0	1,500
30	500	1,000	200	3,500		30	700	1,400	0	2,100
30	1,000	2,000	200	5,000		30	1,000	2,000	100	4,000
30	1,500	3,000	300	7,500		30	1,500	3,000	100	5,500
30	2,000	4,000	400	10,000		30	2,000	4,000	200	8,000
30	2,500	5,000	500	12,500		30	2,500	5,000	200	9,500
30	3,000	6,000	500	14,000		30	3,000	6,000	300	12,000
30	4,000	8,000	500	17,000		30	4,000	8,000	400	16,000
30	5,000	10,000	1,000	25,000		30	5,000	10,000	500	20,000
7	hours					7	hours

Time can also be conserved by eliminating the need for a chip consolidation & chip race. Dealers can consolidate the 100’s out of the pot as needed, leaving enough available for antes. For events over 250 players, the duration of each round could be dropped to 25 minutes which would allow for two more levels and a break to be appended to the end of the schedule.

Hangin’ On.
Nothing really exciting happened to me while sitting at Table 4. I played relatively tight, tried not to get into any battles, and picked up the blinds when I needed to in order to maintain a chip stack.

A guy who looked like he was an active part of the hip-hop community was moved to our table in seat 9 with a healthy stack of about 30,000 and tblinds at 1,000/2,000. The first hand he played was while he was in the big blind with the break quickly approaching. Robert raised from seat 6, the small blind folded, and the new guy called Robert’s raise. The flop came out with a bunch of junk and Robert raised to 8,000. New guy calls. Turn comes with more junk. Robert raises again to 10,000 and the new guy contemplates for a couple minutes, talks some trash, and then folds… flipping up his AK. Robert pulled in the pot of about 20,000 and flipped his stone cold bluff of A2. The look on this guy’s face was priceless… he was mad and had the whole break to think about it.

The next hand after the break pitted the hip-hop guy in the small blind and a pro player in the big blind. The hip-hop guy was a bit on tilt and was firing huge bets with the pro called each one. On the river, the hip-hop guy checked and the pro goes all in and had hip-hop dude covered. Hip-hop guy sat there for 9 minutes until a clock was called. At the end of his allotted time he made a pot-committed call with a top pair of 6’s. The pro showed his straight and hip-hop guy was gone from Table 4 in two hands.

I told the pro that he should thank Robert for putting him on tilt. This pro didn’t play another hand the entire tournament (2+ hours) and advanced to the final.

Hand For Hand.
We got down to about 40 players and nobody wanted to play any hands as 37 players would advance to Sunday. There is no benefit to having a large chip stack as everyone re-starts with 15,000 n the final. Everyone was waiting for the small stacks to go out.

Based on my last HPT experience, I knew the importance if keeping an adequate number of chips. Gunnar was at another table in big trouble and needed people to get knocked out.

I was sitting with about 30,000 in chips, the blinds at 4,000/8,000, and looked down at 99 with only 3 people to act behind me. I raised to 16,000 because I felt I needed some insurance chips. The large Native American man in the big blind had a minor meltdown.

“Who do you think you are raising on MY big blind?”. “Sir,” I replied, “Do you honestly think I would raise with anything but the best starting hand at this point?” I hoped he would think I had aces. He folds and I picked up 17,000 in insurance chips. I didn’t have to play another hand.

Bubble Boy.
Based on the number of players, there were technically 37.2 people who would gain entry into the finals. I thought that if we could reduce the 38th player to 1/5 their normal size, maybe they would let them in. That logic didn’t work with the tournament director.

At 38 players remaining the tournament went hand for hand and everyone at Table 4 had over 20,000 in chips. All the players at our (Robert and I) table were just folding to the big blind on every deal.

There were a few small stacks at the other tables that were about to be blinded or anted out. Gunnar held on for as long as he could but happened to be all-in one hand before two people at the other tables. His cards didn’t hold up and as he rose from his chair to walked out of the room the rest of the field who advanced cheered and clapped as he exited.

It was bittersweet for me. It would have been nice to get 3 out of five into the final from “Team 5th Street”.

Back To The Bee.
The qualifier ended at about midnight and we made a “bee-line” for Bumblebee’s… the bar we visited earlier. We had a blast hangin’ with the locals on St. Patty’s day. We were all buyin’ rounds… I sang some bad karoke… and Robert ended up behind the bar ringing the tip bell and doing shots with the bartenders. The night closed out with us all getting a commemorative yellow Bumblebee’s T-shirt with a picture of the owner and “Toldeo, Iowa” printed on the front.

Day Two - Main Event Final
209 players - $200,000 prize pool – Top 30 places paid

Check-in.
After a quick breakfast at the Meskwaki Casino Jackpot buffet, Robert and I made our way to the poker room. Robert looked like he was in rough shape after the night before. I overheard him apologizing to Charlie for vomiting. ?

At 10am, I was seated at Table 4, Seat 3. Blinds start at 100/100. 15,000 in starting chips.

Different Tone.
The folks at the table seemed a lot less friendly than in the qualifier. Maybe it was the time of day, maybe it was the stakes.

I didn’t play any hands during the first level and picked out 3 guys that I didn’t want to play with. After the tournament I found out that 2 of my picks were at the final table of the last event, and the other was a pro who did well in the last WSOP Circuit event.

Robert taps me on the shoulder to say he’s been eliminated. There are about 120 people left in the tournament.

Pocket 8’s.
I basically went through the motions for the first few hours of the final. An Asian kid who had to be no older than 21 was moved to our table and sitting to my left. His hands were shaking when he made bets and I could see the poker pro salivating at the opportunity to get in a hand with this kid.

Blinds at 300/600. I look down at pocket 8’s and raise to 1,800. The 21 yr. old kid calls. The flop comes 8 4 6 with a flush draw and potential straight. I checked my 3 of a kind and the kid bet. I called.

The turn comes with a 6. I now had the nut full house. I checked and the kid bet really big. I call.

I don’t remember what the river was but I thought I had him hooked. I figured he had a straight or maybe two pair and he was trying to push me off a possible flush draw. I asked the dealer how much was in the pot and was told that the “pot has me covered”. I counted my chips out for a while and then declared all-in. For the next couple minutes this kid kept trying to get me to talk but I pulled my hat down and stared straight at the rail.

He must have deliberated for at least 5 minutes while mumbling, “I think I’ve got you”, “Did you hit 4 of a kind?” When he finally folded he revealed he had an over-pair and asked me what I had… I kept dead silent and it kind of pissed him off. He got up from the table and went on a walk.

About 8 hands later everyone folded to my small blind and I found AK. I raised to 1,600 and the kid went all-in with A3. I made a straight and he was eliminated. One of the better players at the table said later, “That kid never recovered from the hand you two were in earlier”

Sittin’ Pretty.
With about 80 players left I was sitting well above the chip average and simply needed to maintain my position to cruise into the money. With the blinds at 500/1000 I got pocket queens and raised to 3,500. This goofy lookin’ guy with ugly sunglasses and a visor made out of hard plastic went all-in for about 20,000. I call and he flips over 3’s and he looked like he’s was gonna be sick.

Why would he go all-in with pocket 3’s? He’s got plenty of chips and has no need to risk his stack. The only raise-able hand he could possibly dominate would be 22 or A3. If I win this hand I have about 70,000 in chips and will be in fantastic shape.

Of course… he hits a 3 on the flop and my QQ loses to his trip 3’s. He said, “Sorry, I didn’t think you had anything”. I said, “Just Queens. Nice read”.

The Well Runs Dry.
I couldn’t seem to find another playable hand and it had gotten to the point where the short and mid-stacks have only the all-in move left. One guy wearing a Full Tilt shirt that said “I knocked out a Pro” went all-in 4 times in a row in an effort to steal the blinds and antes. I needed some help. Each table rotation was costing 7,500 chips.

With blinds at 1,500/3,000 I caught AK and went all in. I picked up the blinds and antes and increased my stack to about 25,000 in chips.

The blinds are up to 2,000/4,000 and I’m the big blind. The goofing lookin’ guy in the hard hat visor goes all in for 30,000. Everyone folds and I look to my hole cards. AQ suited.

I have 17,000 left plus the 4,000 I just put in the big blind. If I fold I’m facing a small blind and ante of 2,400 on the next hand. With the cost per table rotation at 10,000 I will be blinded out once I hit the blinds again.

This guy doesn’t need to go all-in. He’s probably trying to protect pocket Jacks or Tens. He overplayed his pocket threes the last time around and I’d really like to get some of those chips back. Nobody in front of him called or raised so there’s got to be a good chance the aces are still in the deck.

I figure AQ suited may be my best chance to double up so I call. His 8’s ultimately held up and I was knocked out by a guy in a hard hat.

Overall… a great experience.
65th place. I’m somewhat satisfied as my initial goal was to simply advance past day one. I got unlucky when that guy hit trip 3’s otherwise I really think I could have made a decent run at the money.

Oh well… that’s poker.