Scott is Playing the 2025 WSOP Seniors and Super-Seniors Tournaments

I am back.  My friend Todd and I chatted during the break about the diversity of poker players.  Dirtbags, passive lambs, hard-eyed professionals.  Every table has a buffet of archetypes. He said, “Remember the movie Bullet Train?  One of the characters, Lemon, said that everyone is one of the characters from Thomas the Tank Engine.”  As a TTE fan from my children’s infancy, I get the concept, but I am not sure who I would be.  Definitely not Gordon.  Maybe James . Good lord, the drought continues.  No premium hands, no miracle flops, just a series of mediocre or worse hands.  If someone could design a personal hell for poker players, it is eternally being dealt the second best hand.  (And to clarify, if that would be my personal hell, I might have died and didn’t know it, because that is where I am right now.) The guy to my right’s card protector is a 10mm combination wrench.  That’s a first for me. Speaking of wrench guy, I just k...

First hand - A4.  I pass. First hand I play - K 10 clubs on the button.  Blinds are 100/100, and I call a 300 raise.  The big blind (John Morgan) raises to 800.  I decide to speculate and call along with another guy. The flop is KQ7, two hearts.  The 800 raiser goes 1500.  I think long and hard about it, but decide there are too many hands that beat me, including AK, KQ, and KJ, not to mention AA, KK, Q7 and K7.  So I fold. In retrospect, I’m not sure why I was in the hand in the first place.  If you aren’t willing to play it after the flop, why play it at all? Morgan has been on what poker players call a “heater,” taking down pots on junk hands.  It won’t last. Next hand I play - AJ.  Weird hand.  From middle position, the guy to my right raises to 400, and I call.  We get another caller and then a raise to 1200.  Everyone calls the reraise.  The flop has nothing for me, and the guy to the right bets 4000.  We a...

I’m back! Since we chatted last, I have played six more smaller stakes poker tournaments, some Pai Gow (don’t ask how that game works, it just does), some blackjack, and some bingo. I worked out at the Paris gym (arms), played a lot of online poker, and worked about three New York Times Acrostic puzzles. Diet has not been great, but it has been satisfying in the way that you decide afterwards that you really need to diet when you get back home. I have been assigned Black Table 103 at the Paris Casino, and am surrounded by coots. George Devlin, Seat 1 John Morgan and George Little, Seats 6 & 7 We are starting with 20,000 chips.  I plan to play very tight for the first two hours and let the cards come to me. Cards are in the air!  Let’s go.

First hand is QJ hearts.  Raised to 6,000. I call along with another guy.  Board does not improve, so I fold to a bet. I win the blinds a couple of times over the next ten hands and then I look down at AA.  I shove all in and get one caller, who has JJ. He hits a J on the flop and that is the end of me. Fun while it lasted!  Sorry I could not get to the cash for those of you who put the money in for me, but I hope you enjoyed the ride!

We are back after a nice night’s sleep. When I got back to the hotel room, I was steaming, to say the least.  I went from 109,000 to a mere 47,000 in just three hours.  My chances of cashing in the tournament went down quite a bit. The bagged chips from last night But all is not lost.  Quick stats here: *   There are 1,445 players left. *   The bubble for cashing is 1,137th place. *   I am in 1,180th place.  I need to make up 43 places to cash. *   My table does not have any dominant stacks, so I will be able to make some moves. Plus, I have some momentum.  Last night, I played in an online tournament and finished 1st out of 144 players.  My $50 entry yielded $1,194, a very nice profit! So, I just need to ride that wave and get to about 80,000 chips in the next two hours, and I will make the cash. I am at Horseshoe Blue 438, surrounded by grizzled men. Cards are in the air.  Wish me luck!

This is the last level of the day, thank goodness.  I am absolutely wiped. With the blinds 1000/2000 and a 2000 ante, every orbit takes 5,000 out of my stack.  Hopefully, we play no more than four orbits, which, if I left right now and did not play another hand, would leave me with about 70,000 chips for Day 2.  Not bad! Superman keeps firing at my big blind.  There is no respect coming from him, and I guess he is entitled to keep firing because I haven’t given him any reason to stop. I just folded QQ preflop because there was a raise of 6000, then a reraise to 26000 by the chip leader.  At a different time in the tournament, I would have called the big bet, but her stack is too big and I smelled AA or KK.  No, thank you. _______________ Run of bad luck.  I raised 7,000 with A10 one behind the button, and a loudmouth goes all in for 15,000 with 33.  I call, and he hits a 3 on the flop.  So irritating.  The end of Day 1 could not come soo...

I am back from dinner.  A very nice meal at the Paris Hotel’s French bistro - a salmon salad with blueberries and nuts, and a Diet Pepsi - with the Houston contingent.  So far, April, Samm, Larry, Mark and I are still alive in varying degrees of success. My 109,000 is almost twice the average stack of the 1428 players left.  There were 4211 entrants today, and I am in 163rd place.  I am told there were about 900 players that ended up surviving the first flight, so assuming that we end up close to the same in the second flight, we’d have 1800 players trying to make the bubble of 1200th place.  I just need not to do anything stupid.  This is harder than it seems for a good player like me.  For some reason, probably fatigue, I have made some real boneheaded plays late in the day at the WSOP.  They usually come from reraises where I think I can convince the other player that I am stronger.  It NEVER works. That is why experience matters.  I ...

We’re back.  I’m getting a little hangry - I’ve been sipping a bottle of Diet Pepsi (this is one of those hotels that is not in the Coke family), and packets of trail mix from Wal-Mart.  Two hours left to dinner. All of a sudden, I am crushing it.  I knock out the long haired dude to my right with QQ against his A3, and then I destroy Superman with a set of 10s, played extremely luckily against his AJ. And then a guy named Tom McCormick sits down next to me and hits a set of jacks into my flopped Broadway straight (10 to ace).  Just like that, he gives me 20,000 chips and a biography of Mother Teresa.  What a nice guy! We lost another guy before I could get him on film, and we added a very nice lady to my right, who has taken two pots in a row.  I am glad she is acting before me and not after me. Another new guy, who seems to be hitting on Lisa Hamilton.  He is one of those guys who end their jokes with exactly three “haw, haw, haw”s.  I am not wo...

Another new guy at Table 544 in Seat One, replacing the Giggler.  Another hard-eyed guy buying in for the first time.  These new players are dangerous because they are already behind and feel compelled to double up as soon as possible.  Plus you don’t know their style the way you do with the people you’ve been playing with for the last four hours. Superman just doubled up with AA when Purple Haired Lady got over her skis with K4 offsuit and went all-in on him.  Just like that, she’s at about 12,000 chips.  And just like that, the most insufferable player at the table has about 26,000.  So annoying. And now the French Glasses Guy is gone, his KK going down to the Asian woman’s AA, no help from the board.  Superman calls her Lisa Hamilton, so I check it out on the WSOP site and there she is, a bracelet winner from 2009 .  So another person to worry about. Ack!  I gave away 9,000 chips to Superman.  His 55 held up against my AQ.  A cal...

At the end of the last level, we lost Chucky Guy, who was knocked out by the Purple Haired Lady when she spiked a two-outer to make a set of sixes.  He had been more passive than I expected, and you can’t survive this game by waiting for good hands.  Adios Chucky! During the twenty-minute break, I reflected on the WSOP’s infrastructure for accommodating the bladders of three or four thousand old men.  It reminded me of the Harris County courthouse elevator problem, which was this: how many elevators do you build to accommodate thousands of defendants, lawyers, and court staff who are all going to court at the same time ?  You can’t go by the average number of people over the course of the day, because there is a two-hour window where everyone is using the elevators, and then six hours where they are hardly used at all. WSOP accommodates this by having a GIANT number of urinals and toilets we all use at once.  It is really something to see. New guy has replaced H...

Here is my table, my home for the day (I hope). There was a small delay in seating as the tournament director told the players in the White section not to take their seats until they could determine whether there were enough chairs.  Hmmm. As the players filter in, I can see the guys at my end of the table.  I am sitting next to a man in a gray hoodie and blue jeans.  Across the table is a man in a Minnesota Vikings hat, resting his phone on his belly.  Next to him is a man in a Chucky T-shirt. Late arrivals are a lady in a sensible hair cut and a guy in a T-shirt advertising Brother’s Burritos in Hermosa Beach, California. First hand is Q4 off-suit.  Lady raises to 400 and I fold my  small blind. Second hand is junk, but I make the amateur mistake of folding when I could check.  Table probably now thinks I am a newb.  Good. I get a A9 of spades.  The lady, who I just noticed has a prominent tattoo on her wrist, raises from early position to ...

Good morning! I am in my room at the Paris Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, mentally preparing for today's first day of the Seniors Tournament. Freshly showered, shaved, dressed - no black suit and tie this year, mainly because the poor black suit had seen better days, with an unfortunate rip along the seam between the two legs.  Yes, that would be the exposed rear end. I did not realize this until I had gone to a chef's table with my family to welcome my mother to Pearland, where she has relocated from Arkansas.  Six courses with wine, a wonderful time, a slow promenade through the main dining room, the picture  of wealth and success, with my underwear peeking out from under my suit coat. When I got home and undressed, I realized that this suit was not going to Las Vegas with me. So, khakis and a black shirt with a blue jacket and sunglasses optional, depending on the composition of the table.  If they are jerks, the glasses and headphones go on.  If they are, as ...

On the plane with Bert.  Hour delay due to lightning.  Bad omen? We shall see.  But we are leaving!  See you when I get to Vegas.

As I enjoy my 61st year on this verdant orb we call home (albeit less verdant every day due to climate change as we suffer through what used to be August weather now in early June, especially in my back yard and especially in my herb garden which I really should water more frequently because there is nothing sadder than a wilting basil plant, which you really can't kill except by neglect, but somehow I do), I find myself dwelling on the past. The title of this blog post is drawn from a commencement speech given this year at the University of North Dakota by Chuck Klosterman , a cultural observer I admire, and it sums up his belief that life has meaning to the extent that it means something to  you.  Here's part of what he said: In 50 years, no matter what you do and what you accomplish, there ’ s a very high probability that no one will remember and no one will care. T his is not a criticism of you or of anyone else. It ’ s just how history operates, and imagining otherwise is...

I remember precisely  when the strangeness of the World Series of Poker became normal to me. It was when pushing ten one-hundred-dollar bills through a cashier's window at the Rio All-Suites Casino to enter the Seniors Tournament for the third time did not feel like an irrevocable loss of an obscenely large amount of money to play in a poker tournament I had little chance of making money in, much less winning. As I had done before, I fanned the Benjamins in front of the cashier and watched her gather them together, hand-count them, and then run them through a mechanical currency counter, and then begin inputting my information into the WSOP database, the money resting lightly there, still in reach, still refundable, no harm to me and the family corporation, available for more productive uses like wheelbarrows or new tires or vet bills or one thousand entrees on the McDonald's Dollar Meal menu.  I could just take them back and fly home and play within my means at the neighborh...