Central Valley Poker Championships Recap - Part 2 (with pics!)

Ok, so the Monte Carlo leg of my vacation was a bit of a bust. The Hotel de Paris is a garish monstrosity with small rooms, confused signage and too many plastic people for my taste. I like history and love most cities in Europe, but the whole setting was just too much. I spent a gross amount of money and still felt like I’d spent two days in steerage of a cruise ship run aground on the coast of France.

Trust me, it was horrible...

I did take the opportunity to have a look at Le Casino, the magnificent but sedate casino adjacent to the hotel. At Club One, we have more table game action than they do, but they obviously trump us with slots, location and prestige. It’s funny the things you notice as an owner—no photo ID badges on the staff, high camera placement, no sound from the slots, lower table minimums than I’d have guessed, etc. Their guests are somewhat better dressed than ours, too.

Le Casino

Monte Carlo itself is a gem built into the side of the Maritime Alps, but its tax haven status and rep as a jet-set hot spot attracts a ongoing stream of drifters and charlatans who happen to use yachts or Bentleys for transportation. The general theme is “Look at me! Let me show you how much money I have to blow!” and everything is shiny from the cars (it’s a crime to drive an unwashed car), to the baubles (every luxury brand over-represented), to the skin of the visitors (tanned and tucked to extreme). After two days, I’d had my fill of the gaudy consumption and fled to Italy.

I’m now holed up in the Four Seasons in Florence after a day-long skirmish with taxis and Hertz which I settled by offering a wad of Euros to a driver in San Remo and querying “Firenze?” The hotel recently reopened after a multi-year renovation and in terms of facility and service easily blows the Hotel de Paris back into the Mediterranean. To compare the two hotels is sort of like comparing Pam Anderson and Angelina Jolie sans tattoo. The former has the goods albeit renovated but after two nights you'll be looking for the door; the latter is just as sexy but more suited for an extended stay.

The view from the back door

My current locale, Florence, is the capital city of the Tuscany region of Italy with a population of about 370,000, some 100,000 fewer people than the city of Fresno. It was home to the Medicis (the bankers) and Dante Alighieri (a namesake of sorts), the birthplace of da Vinci and occasional home of Michelangelo (damned talented Italians, IMO) and is widely considered a cultural center of Europe. Tonight I’m embracing its long tradition of poetry and art by completing CVPC Part II and watching “21” on DVD.

The Line-up for the Celeb event

The Central Valley Poker Championships kicked off on Sunday August 3rd at Club One, with 221 players competing for over $13,000. We followed with a different tournament each day of the week until the highlights, Event #6, the Celebrity Bounty Event on Friday, and Event #7, the $50,000 Guaranteed Main Event on Saturday. As I mentioned in Part I of my CVPC recep, for Friday’s event, we had invited a number of notables including:

Jose Canseco - 1988 American League MVP, six-time MLB all-star, aspiring poker player
Ashley Collette – an FHM magazine model, voted one of the "100 Sexiest Women Alive"
Mike & Janet Dages - Fresno City Councilman and his wife, both good friends of Club One Casino
Shaun "shaundeeb" Deeb – Top-5 ranked online tournament player worldwide
Barbara Enright – member, Women in Poker Hall of Fame, the only woman to final table a WSOP main event and winner of the 2008 Legends of Poker Ladies event
Terence Frazier - former major league baseball player and local Fresno entrepreneur
Steve "TT" McLoughlin and Serge "Adanthar" Ravitch – moderators on TwoPlusTwo.com, the world's leading poker website
Matt O'Dette - captain of the Fresno Falcons hockey team
Max Shapiro – writer for CardPlayer magazine
Jason Von Flue – Club One-sponsored mixed martial arts fighter and contestant on Ultimate Fighter 2
Marsha Waggoner – “Lady Poker Extraordinaire”, member of the Women in Poker Hall of Fame and international rep for Crown Casino in Australia and

On Friday, I got up early, shook off the Cabernet cobwebs from the previous night and hit the gym before our other invited guests began filing in. Adanthar,, TT, Shaun, Barbara and Max stumbled in piecemeal from next door, and by 4p, Jose Canseco and his girlfriend, Heidi Northcutt, a stunner who runs an online marketing business, Ashley Collette, Marsha Waggoner, Matt O’Dette and Jason Von Flue were all wandering around the casino getting their bearings.

Our patrons were inspired by the presence of such luminaries. Club One customers aren’t shy with their support of odd causes—Fresno State, the 49ers, open-ended straight draws—and proudly show support through apparel, tattoos and in the case of the OESD, a shove in the face of little or no fold equity. Nonetheless, I was surprised when one of the staff pointed out that a customer had shaved our logo into his head for the event.

At first I thought she was joking, but upon inspection, I confirmed that it was true. Note that he wasn’t responding to any sort of competition—his haircut was completely unsolicited. I thanked him for his show of support and asked him to stand for a photo. I also planted the seed for an upgrade, noting that if he shaved his head bald and tattooed our logo and phone number across his skull, I’d considered reimbursing him for his out-of-pocket expense.

We’d run “celebrity” events before but I was curious to see our staff’s ability to manage this crew of documented miscreants without incident. When you own a card room, there’s always the grey cloud of regulatory oversight over whatever you do. Most days I feel like I’m leading a pack of rowdy degenerates through a gauntlet of DUI checkpoints with several of them standing up through the sunroof howling profanities and toasting the officers as we drive by. I’m convinced it’s only a matter of time before I hear a short siren burst and a sobering “Been drinking tonight have we, boys?”

Off we go!

But we’re nothing if not committed and the event started with over 90 civilians joining our celebs in NL combat. I introduced our invited guests to polite applause and cued our tournament director to initiate action.

Nice crowd

We structured all our CVPC events with 10,000 start chips, 25/50 start blinds and 30-minute rounds so I’d done my part to stack the event in favor of our ringers. On the other hand, I added $100 bounty on each to make sure anytime they entered a pot they’d have most of the table tagging along. As any experienced gunslinger can tell you, the price on a man’s head matters more than the size of his weapon, and that maxim held true in Event #6. All the invited pros busted out well before the bubble. In fact, I’m not sure any of them made the first break or even posted an ante.

There was a nervous moment early when Barbara was all-in with a set of sixes with four spades on the board. She was convinced she’d be the first to the rail, but I knew her flopped set was the nuts. Sure enough, at the river, the other players in the pot showed 3rd pair, top kicker A

and two pair, respectively. Barbara scooped the pot and commented, “I thought for sure one of them had the flush.” Welcome to Club One, hon.

I’m telling you, they don’t have spades

Out they go!

Ironically, world top five shaundeeb was the first pro out when his 55 on a 432 board failed to improve against an overpair.

A confluence of beauty and talent

Adanthar was out next with some random trash like TPTK.

Bemused, obv

TT lasted the longest of the boys from out of state. I’m not sure what sent him to the rail, but it was probably some odd hand and line which convinced that Fresno poker is stuck in 2004.

TT, the Councilman and Jose back-to-back-to-back

Jose lasted longer than our “pro” players but still got bounced well before the money. His girlfriend fared better and stormed into the final table as the chip leader. Of the other notables, only Jason Von Flue, a poker novice coached between hands by LakeofFire, made the final table. The others crapped out and ended up in the restaurant multi-tabling.

Back to the comfort zone

A seasoned competitor

Jose once again proved himself a surprising asset for any poker event. Say what you want about the off-field drama, the 1988 AL MVP shows up on time, looks like a pro athlete and socializes with everyone. He’s also an enthusiastic player who’s open to any poker-related conversation. If you own a card room and don’t invite him to your events, you do your room and your customers a huge disservice.

Charter member, 40/40 Club

Specifically, he was gracious and friendly with everyone, including all our regular short on social skills card room riff-raff. None of Hellmuth’s “I am a poker god. Lower your eyes in my presence.” or [fill in the name of most poker pros]’s “Pardon me while I get too drunk to complete a sentence.” nonsense. After he busted out on Friday night, he gave an impromptu interview to a local TV station and then on Saturday, sat for a staged interview to two others. He also signed piles of Club One gear for gawkers and stood for a ton of photos. Not only that, he sat in our 2/5 NL game and went on a huge heater in the 2/2 NL game on Saturday, running a $100 stack up to about $800 in minutes when his top set got paid off in a multi-way pot. I’m not sure our regulars liked the way he drained their cash from the table, but his presence was a real treat for the Fresno poker community.

Workin’ the 2/5 NL game

He juggled the TV guys like a veteran and gave a good interview with lots of props to the casino. And as I alluded above, his girlfriend Heidi is hot, smart and can play--she finished 5th or 6th in the event and knew exactly what she was doing throughout. Admittedly, she pulled a wicked suck out with ATo v AA at the final table but hey, we all would if we could.

The Grand Dames et al.

A word or two on the other out-of-town guests. Barbara Enright and Max Shapiro were both a hoot and a fun addition to the event. Barbara has a pile of stories from her days married to a former Dodger (as in baseball, not tax) and the last 30 years loitering in poker rooms taking money from hapless chumps. Throughout the weekend, she kept threatening to publish her lurid stories, and I dabbled with the notion of optioning the lot.

The storyteller

Max Shapiro is her straight man, a polite craftsman of words who’s authored over 120 articles for CardPlayer magazine. In other words, he was writing about poker well before writing about poker was cool. He was gracious and complimentary throughout the weekend and I took his “We were very pleasantly surprised with your card room.” as high praise. He’s seen a lot of rooms.

Max Shapiro

Marsha Waggoner, a friend of Barbara’s, was another colorful addition to the event. Like Barbara, Marsha made a nice living separating men from their stacks and she’s got her own satchel of road stories. The “Grand Dame of Poker” is an executive host at Hollywood Park and spokesperson for Crown Casino in Australia and has a great nose for value. She spent most of the weekend camped in the 15/30 game.

Marsha "Lady Poker Extraordinaire" Waggoner

Ashley Collette was a woman of extremes, both the best looking and least experienced of all the players in the room. We seated her at the main table with Jose, Janet Dages and Barbara Waggoner and alternated Meemee and Su near her to coach her through her first time at the table. She took to poker like a fish on a bicycle, but in a rare display of Club One hospitality, no one complained. Apparently, when you pull 17,000,000 online votes in the FHM Digital Darling competition, Club One patrons are willing to overlook your lack of poker fundamentals.

Ashley picks the dealer she wants

"Ladies, how about one more for Vanity Fair..."

The pride of Fresno

We’re sponsoring the Fresno Falcons this year as they return to Selland Arena in downtown Fresno, and in reciprocity, they sent their captain, Matt O’Dette, and a staffer from the marketing department. O’Dette is an imposing defenseman, who at 6’5” and 228 lbs. is a nightmare for opponents hurtling toward them at thirty miles an hour. He’s also got a fine roster of fights on his hockey resume and we were happy to have him in-house and on our side for the event.

On defense…Matt O'Dette

We also beefed up by inviting Jason Von Flue, a contender on Ultimate Fighter 2 and good friend of Club One. Jason’s a dangerous ground fighter who can cripple at will. He always shows for Club One charity events or pay-per-view fights and we toss a few sponsorship dollars his way for a prime spot across the back of his fight trunks. It’s part of my “keep guys in your weight class who can kill you complacent” strategy and has the added benefit of providing added exposure to our key 21-45 male demographic.

Jason and a C1 customer moments before his death

Side note: A few of us went to see Jason’s bout on he following Friday night. He was matched against a brute named Kamaka from a rough area of Oahu. Jason was the pre-fight favorite, but when the Hawaiian landed a hard right to his chin, Jason dropped hard. We freaked, but as Kamaka moved in to pummel him, Jason spun him into a hold that threatened to blow out his knee for life. Tap tap tap. The howls of approval you hear in the background in the YouTube below are Club One folks. Cue to the last 30 seconds.

Note the bottom of the shirt

Sir, that was a mistake...

Cue to the last 30 seconds

Le table finale!

Despite their talents and experience, all but two of our celebs failed to negotiate the briar patch of Club One tournament poker. Jason hacked his way through the field with LakeofFire’s careful coaching (“You’re short. Shove.”) but finally busted in 7th or 8th place. Heidi seemed to have a lock on the event; her striking looks and calculated moves resulted in a monster stack but her run ended in 5th or 6th place when a Q high shove didn't get there.

The event finally wrapped about 1a with Kevin Lusk, Oran C. and Ron M. chopping three ways for over $1600 each.

Right, ok...get out of here already…

By the time, the final three players chopped, our celebrities had either a) gone home (Ashley, Jason, Matt et al.), b) scattered throughout the casino (Barbara, Max, Marsha and TT) or c) retreated to their room to play online (Serge, Shaun). I made a mental note to invite more live limit playing celebs next year and headed to the bar to regroup before last call. Tomorrow's event would start at 12:15p sharp and I thought a hangover would add a fun twist to the day...

Next up…Central Valley Poker Championships – The Conclusion in which our notables again fail at live poker and Deeb saves face by winning $115,000 online.

Edmond

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