I was in a television control room again. Producers, directors, graphics gurus and their ilk zoomed back and forth and kept muttering "bloody this and blood that."
I hate TV, I thought.
And it's not that I hate TV. I just hate the memories of it. I'm only three months removed from that sinking feeling that I'm going to be standing in the rain at 6pm talking about some poor slob who got himself shot earlier that day.
That's the kind of TV I hate.
But this was poker TV, and, my, but if that doesn't make all the difference.
A couple hours before I'd been drinking coffee with one of the marketing gurus. She'd mentioned it might be nice to get me in the commentary booth for a couple of the Costa Rican matches. The thinking wasn't all that wrong. I knew two of the Costa Rican players from previous tournaments and had some good "American" knowledge about their history. I figured it would just be, "So, Otis, tell us about these guys."
That, I thought, I can do.
And yet when the first Costa Rican match started with a player I knew pretty well, they'd not called on me. So be it, I thought. I'm not a TV guy anymore. I'm a web dude.
Austria and Norway were up next. Two stern-faced Mr. Unpronounceables were taking their seats and James, the producer, said, "Okay, you ready to do some commentary?"
Um...sure.
That's how it began. With 30 seconds to live-to-tape air, I sat down in the color commentators seat, arranged some hastily-compiled notes, and wondered what I had just gotten myself into.
Now, if you've never done broadcast work before, the pros will tell you it's a lot like riding a bike. What they won't tell you is that riding a bike on th street is a lot different than riding it down a mountain.
And somehow...I was scared out of my jeans.
Frankly, if the first 30 minutes of the first match never make air, I'll be quite happy. I likely sounded a bit like a kid who has been asked to recite the Declaration of Independence after having studied the preamble to the Constituion for three weeks.
But I got through it. Within a couple of matches, I was insulting my mother-in-law and using self-depricating humor as best I could. And it was, in a word, FUN.
Fortunately, I think, for me, the show will likely never air in the U.S. Last I heard it will be on the new Poker Channel on the Sky network.
The best part of all of it was my co-commentators. One is a radio guy from the UK who is as nice as you could possibly wants. He's not a pro poker player but knnows the game well. The other guy is a pro and a good one. What's more, he'll be playing with us in Event #2 of the WSOP in a couple weeks.
Which brings me to...
Vegas dreams
Yeah, it's started.
My travel and work schedule has kept me a bit to busy to daydream about the adventure we're all about to undertake. Now, I'm starting to think about it a bit more.
I've had no time to work on my tournament game recently. Based on my play a few weeks ago, I don't have very high expectations for Event #2. That, of course, is no way to go into a tournament. Hopefully between now and then my attitude will change.
As anybody who has played for a while can attest, once you play at a certain level/limit for some time, slipping back down in limits becomes easier to handle.
With that in mind, I tried a little experiement recently. I moved up to the $30/$60 game on Party for a few hundred hands. I don't have a big enough sample to form any decent opinion, but suffice it to say Jesse May was right when he said (paraphrasing here, because I'm too lazy to look up the quote) the only difference between $10/$20 and the bigger limits is that the chips are a different color. That is, there are good players and there are bad players. The poker is the same. In my first 200 hands, the deck hit me in the head.
On one particular hand, I found aces in the small blind, raised it up and got two callers. The flop came down AJx. Checked around to me, I bet and both callers came along for the ride. The turn was the case ace giving me quads. Again I bet and this time the big blind raised, the guy in the middle called, and I again raised. Both guys called. The turn was a blank. The pot was already substantial and I thought, "I wonder if I can make more than two big bets here?" Now, the smart money says just bet out again, pull in another $120 and call it a hand. But I wanted more. So, I checked and much to my delight, the big blind fired out a bet, got a call from the guy in LP, and I got my opportunity to raise. Two callers and I made $240 extra instead of $120. The big blind had QJ. I never checked to see what the other guy had. He'd steamed off $1000 in the past few hands and was likely chasing something.
Still, I'm not going to call those tables home. If I had enough time to concentrate on my game, I'd give it a go. But my head is all over the place right now and I don't trust myself not to tilt off a bunch of money.
Regardless, it gave me that ability to play at my normal limits with a little more confidence which I hope carries over to the trip.
So, there. Complete drivel from the guy who is supposed to do more writing than poker talk. Not sure what's wrong with me right now. I need inspiration.
Only way to find that is head back to the land of milk and honey. I left Vegas last December with enough to fill a novella.
I can't imagine this trip will be any less inspirational.