Password Posts
I know there's some people that actually read this blog, so just a quick note. I'm going to start making private entries which are basically for myself. Don't think I'm shutting you out but some of the stuff I need to post and keep myself honest with are pretty private and I want to keep them centralized, thus, the private posts.
read moreJuly Recap
It's funny how much this blog has changed over the last 2 years. I remember when I played micro-stakes full ring I'd be so excited to post my graph and show my results and talk about how bad I always run. Ahh good times. Now, I barely play poker and work in the industry so I think, imo, that this blog got a lot more interesting the way it currently is. Problem is I barely updated it!
Poker
The good news is that I did pretty well in live poker and although I didn't play that much while in Vegas, the time was profitable and I think my new found mental state is really helping me. I was definitely in the positive, but I really didn't keep track of how much.
Online poker ... well ... I seriously didn't play any. (Firing up HEM now) ... wow looks like I booked a losing month but hey, just 5730 hands so I don't think that counts. Or maybe it does. Who cares?
Looks like the most I played was 25nl at a whopping 2,245 hands and I lost $31 lol. I think I was experimenting to see if I could go back to playing 19 tables on Stars. I think I never hit crap and ran into a few coolers but honestly, so little hands who cares. I remember playing 100nl 6max on Cake and getting a couple of really bad beats ... oh God here I go again. Let's just say the results were bad but I felt good about my game. Heads-up didn't go well either but I just put in a total of 465 at 50nl HU so I don't think that counts either.
Basically - I didn't play enough poker to give myself any sort of fair evaluation of my mental state, game state or results at all. Sorry!
The good news is that I am really going to put an effort out to organize my time better and set aside time specifically for poker. So, I am hoping August's recap will actually (finally?) have some good online poker content.
So ... what are you doing with your time?
I can comfortably say that I didn't play a lot of poker in July because of burn out. Staying in Vegas for so long covering the WSOP definitely burned me out on the game. When you are around the game for 14 hours in a day pretty much the last thing you want to do is fire up the tables. The thing you do want to do is blow people up!
Weeeeeeeeee! Been playing the hell out of StarCraft 2, and as some of you know, I am a big time gamer. I played every RTS game that's mattered over the last 15 years so for SC2 to finally come out is like a god-send. I went to the big giant Blizzard release party at Frys Electronics in Fountain Valley and was just blown away by how many people were there. Needless to say the game has taken up a lot of time and it's been real fun playing with my friends online. TIME VAMPIRE.
Conclusions
- Had a ton of fun at the WSOP covering the Main Event and got a ton of kudos from people in the industry for my work. I'm still very thankful and humbled.
- StarCraft 2 is awesome
- More poker in August
Appreciate the Complements & Some Pics
There have been a few people lately that have either come up to me in person or through their blogs (FP) that have been very complementary towards my work on-camera for PND. I just want to really thank them all because the feedback means a ton to me. When you work "virtually" and your product is online, more often than not you either hear absolutely nothing (good job!) or you get flamed (usually bad job). The fact that I've received some complements is awesome and considering the circumstance that I was in with the November Niners recently, I think it all came out beautifully. For those of you that didn't know, play started at noon with 27 players and ended the next day at 6am with the final 9. Marathon session for players, dealers, WSOP officials and media.
Moving into the future things at PND look really bright. Traffic is up and the response to the traffic has been phenomenal. People like the content and it has people coming back, which means we've become more popular with sponsors, which means, well ... budget to keep my job!
I really love the work with PokerNewsDaily and I do not see myself moving on from that situation. My boss is a great guy and working with him and Nat Arem is a treat because I really get to learn about this industry from two top notch and intelligent guys. What I could see happening (I hope!) is doing some on-air work in complement to PND which I think would help us at PND get more exposure. I could hopefully take my talents for on-air TV interviews for any of the various poker TV shows that are on now. I could even see doing play-by-play for a poker show as well. Obviously those shows tape like once a month at the most so it could definitely work out. But clearly, you're beginning to see we're building something very special at PND and I am very honored that I get to be a big part of that.
So, after a very successful 2010 WSOP I've managed to survive, which is a win on its own. I'm incredibly tired and of course ... caught a little cold which I am fighting off. In the meantime, again, thanks to all of you out there that have been tuning in and watching - it really means the world to me!
Some pics (click to enlarge):
John Racener, Member of the 2010 WSOP November Nine
Jonathan Duhamel, Chip Leader of the November Nine
Joseph Cheong, Member of the WSOP November Nine
Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi, November Nine
2010 WSOP November Nine
The final 9 players in the WSOP Main Event are called the November Nine. This year, the 2010 November Nine promise to be some of the best tournament players in the game today with a great mix of recognizable names from both online and live circuits.
The day began today with 27 players but today we will play all the way down to the final table which will start with ten players. Once those ten players are at the table, which is being filmed by at least 8 cameras on-site by ESPN, they will eliminate one person and have play halted, to resume back here at the Rio on November 9th.
Players that figure to be in the hunt include the chip leader, Joseph Cheong who is from La Mirada, California. It's great to see that many fellow Southern Californians are doing well and remain, including Soi Nguyen who was second in chips when today began, who hails from Santa Ana, CA which is about 15 minutes from where I live. Other So Cal players include Adam Levy, Hasan Habib (Downey, CA) and Patrick Eskandar from Ladera Ranch.
One player that has really impressed me is Jason Senti who is a lead instructor over at BlueFirePoker.com and a nice guy to boot. He normally plays mid and high stakes Heads-Up cash games and I got a great interview with him after play was done yesterday. Another name climbing the charts is Italian poker pro Filippo Candio who grinds out tournaments on PokerStars because in Italy you cannot play cash games online.
A lot of the buzz on the floor is with Joseph Cheong who is strong, confident and really skilled at the game. He's already gotten management, as have many of the top players remaining, and might just be a household name in poker come November for the conclusion of the Main Event.
Canadians should be very proud as three of the final 20 players (and counting) hail from the great country up north with Jonathan Duhamel, Pascal LeFrancois and Matthew Jarvis doing their country proud.
If you want to read more, check out the coverage at 2010 WSOP November Nine.
read moreTwitter Updates
Instead of trying to update the blog here and there I will be updating twitter from the WSOP ME and giving updates and hopefully some pictures too. You can find me:
When I get back from the trip I'll post up some more pictures and hopefully have a few stories to tell. Ivey is at the WPT final table so I might get an interview with him (doubtful he hates to do them) plus I got all the Main Event madness going on. Fun times!
read moreSome Pictures While Working the WSOP 2010
While working at the WSOP 2010 I had a lot of pictures taken. Most of which are for use exclusively at PND, but I grabbed a few that had me in them, so I will share those with you here on my blog. Enjoy! (You can click on the pictures to enlarge them)
That is Ali Nejad, you might recognize him as host of the NBC Heads Up World Championship and other broadcasts. The guy does a top notch job and is a very nice guy on top of that.
I interviewed Annie Duke and Don Cheadle at the Ante Up for Africa WSOP event. Don said about 10 words the entire time on the red carpet ... that is until he got to me. I think he and I connected; he's a cerebral guy who thinks a lot, but when I asked specific questions (i.e. not the same 5 they had been asked already by 14 different reporters) he really opened up.
You know this guy, Phil Hellmuth, for his ridiculous entrances. I got to interview him afterwards at the UB Suite and he was in real good spirits. I figured he was actually in line for another Main Event deep run, but he didn't last the day. That's poker!
This is WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel. He pretty much has the toughest job at the WSOP when it's running (the other person might be their head of PR Seth Palanksy) and was able to take 5 minutes with us right after he did his "Shuffle Up and Deal" speech on Day 1A. Nice guy, smart guy, good interview.
I would never call anyone I've interviewed or ran into a dozen times "a friend" I would say that Joe Cada became a very strong acquaintance during this past trip. Joe's a great guy, obviously very young, but really loves poker and enjoys to play. We talked at the PokerStars cocktail party about his cash game past and he told me about grinding Heads Up for 3 years.
I got to interview Joe Sebok and we did it right in front of the UB Suite. He was just standing there and nobody noticed him so we did our interview. As *SOON* as we started taping and I started interviewing him about 500 people stopped to take pictures of us. It was really funny but the WSOP PR people were uber-pissed because we apparently weren't allowed to shoot in the hallway (contrary to what I was told by a co-worker). Anyways we didn't get in too much trouble and Joe's a great guy so the interview will hopefully come together well.
Nolan Dalla is an old-school poker journalist and writer, and authored Stu Ungar's biography, "One of a Kind" which I highly recommend to all poker people. I talked with him at the WSOP (he's working for their website this year) about the new and the old and we did talk about Stu a bit too. Nolan is the stone cold nuts in terms of being a nice guy to other people in the industry.
Finally, this is Tiffany Michelle who was doing the same job I do basically (well, about 33% of what I do) just 2 years ago before a sick run in the WSOP Main Event. I've written before how she's gotten a bad rap from her exploits from the ESPN broadcast (admittedly she did some dumb stuff) but overall she's a very nice person and a lot of fun to hang out with.
read moreAbout Me
My name is Sean Gibson and I am a poker journalist and part time poker player. I work full time at PokerNewsDaily.com where I host a daily news show called "The Daily Deal" and also handle the bulk of the live player interviews. In terms of poker you will find me playing $1/$3 No Limit Hold'em in Vegas or in Los Angeles (or San Diego) and online playing small stakes games.
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