22d PLACE AGONY...AND THE TUNICA CANKLE MONSTER!!!

PARTIAL VIEW of the 480 entrants in this years $1600 Tunica Main Event Buy-In.  A Chechnyan
mine field of insanity.  Photo credit:  Jennifer Gay.

Wow.  I don't even know how to begin this semi-epic blog about this weekend in Tunica.  Maybe it would help if I offered an illuminating geographical comparison.

Mississippi's gaming mirrors Nevada's in a unique aspect.  It's two biggest gambling towns are laid out both in the most southern point of the state.  Nevada has Las Vegas in the very southernmost point in that angled state, Mississippi has Biloxi, which hangs off Mississippi in a neat little peninsula.  Their two lesser gambling towns are both nestled in the upper Northwest corners of the state.  These two also-rans are known as Reno, Nevada and Tunica, Mississippi.

And without actually having ever been to Reno, Nevada, I'm going to go ahead and call Tunica the "Reno of Mississippi," or maybe I'll just call Tunica the "Biggest Little city in Mississippi," stealing their slogan.  So to properly imagine Tunica, just imagine a smaller, southern, fun-house circus mirror aimed at Reno.

I really didn't like the fact that I'd have to zoom into Tunica just to play the main event.  I never play well in a series for the first few tournaments; it takes me a little while to get acclimated into correct game form -- a few tourneys to get a feel for this particular crowd's style, and a chance to adapt to them.   But I'd been here before, done well, and I thought I was prepared for the same weak-passive, calling station, belly full of Paula Dean buffet burpin' good country folk.

***Important note to tourists:  Never, ever, EVER make any off-color jokes about Paula Dean while in Tunica, Mississippi.  Just trust me on this one.***

The WSOP's decision to lower their 2011 circuit buy-ins to $1600 from $5000 is a smart move.  2009's main event entrants in Tunica were 154.  2010's entrants were a paltry 96 entrants.  It's easy to forget that in our economic heyday, Tunica's 2006 WSOP Circuit event boasted a $10,000 buy-in that could draw 240 people, and allow Daniel Negreanu a juicy $750,000 first place payout.  This years winner would have to be content with $140,000, still doing better than last year's payout.

But before I descriptively walk you through the Chechnyan mine field of insanity that was the 2011 Tunica Main Event, I am proud to say that I captured an amazing creature on video.  Weeks ago, in a previous blog, I told you of my "Roxanne moment."  This week, I'm proud to say, I had my "Loch Ness moment."  A moment that when it hits you, you hope to God, or as she's known here in Tunica, Paula Dean, you have your camera on you.

With the tournament starting in half an hour, I wanted to do a quick run-in to the "mall" of Tunica, located directly across Harrah's.  It was there that I encountered the creature.

It's gleaming white drooping hamstrings swayed lugubriously across it's brilliant pasty gigantic calves.  The dress, serving ceremoniously as mudflaps from behind, did it's best to conceal the spectacle, but with the last of the northerly winds of Winter, the occasional "Marilyn Monroe updraft" would scoop up the black dress revealing what spilled out over it's tan UGG boots...the most prized, dimpled cankles in all the Western Hemisphere.

This was the Loch Ness of Tunica.  The Holy Grail of Cankledom.  These mighty cankles were replete with ripples upon ripples of adipose tissue, dimples, stretched out skin, bulging muscle to the point of fully displaced ligament and tendon views.

She got legs...she knows how to use them...She got legs...

I would watch the creature, approaching slowly...ever so slowly as to not disturb it in it's natural habitat.  It had appeared to arrive in two transports, both silver, and both emptied out, ready to be loaded with something.

But with what?

Well I figured if Loch Ness had "Nessie," than this was surely my "Tunie." But I wasn't so sure if that was the best comparison for my discovery.  Consider also, this short film I was able to surreptitiously take of the creature.  I apologize for it's brevity and lack of clarity.  At the very last second, you can barely see the creature look back at my camera.  Then compare it to the famous Patterson film from Northern California (very close to Reno, NV) made in 1967 directly below.

What else can I say?  I want a grant!  I want full funding for a research team on an expedition, complete with doctors, cartographers, DNA researchers, paleontologists, archaeologists, and Indian chiefs along with venerable country folk to supply stories and locations of previous encounters.

Putting the "UGG" back in "UGGs."

Now back to the story.  "Tunie" came with two young servants.  She would beckon to them with a series of low, staccato grunts.  The servants would then move back and forth fearfully, loading up box upon box of some precious cargo into the two transports.  I moved closer, fearfully, not being armed with anything other than a body full of adrenaline; a body that would not hesitate to choose "flight."

What was Tunie having loaded up in her tranports?  Cookies.  Boxes upon boxes of cookies.  Samoas.  Peanut Butter Fills.  Do Si Dos.  Chocolate Fudge.  Macaroons.  By my count, 55 boxes.

Carefully, my preeeeeeeecccccioussssss....

Unless she's expecting 15,000 visits from Santa Claus this year,
she clearly has other plans for the cookies.

I hurried off to the tournament.  I had seen all I could afford to witness.  With the frenzy of activity, I wound up being a full half hour late to the tournament.

I made my way back into the Harrah's convention center to the crowd of 480 people playing poker.  There was the usual clicking of chips, but the room was unnervingly quiet.  I found my table and looked up to see both "Smilin'" Don Norman and Scott Williams.  Never truly glad to see friends at my table with me; there's not a whole lot of good things that can come out of that situation for anyone, but we all said our friendly "hellos," and began to play...but it was still eerily quiet in a room filled with somewhere over 500 people, staff and workers included.

"Don," I said, "It sure is quiet in here, isn't it?"

Don and the part of the table not involved in a hand looked up and kind of giggled and agreed.  Then, as if in an old cowboy epic movie, I loudly added, "...too quiet!"

And with that, all the lights in the room went BLACK.  All electricity shut off until the generators could kick back on.  Only a couple of gleams of cellphones throughout the room gave any light at all.  There were shouts of "Cover up your chips!" and "What's going on?" and some laughter mixed in with worried murmurs.

Of course at my table and the tables around me, everyone was laughing hysterically at how what I had said seemed to cause such a weird event!  Of course, that meant, everyone but me.  The first fear that flashed into my mind was that "Tunie" had found her way to the main circuit breaker of the building, ripped out or eaten the main power cords, and was headed into our room for a 500 plus meal of pure red-meat carnage.  Was she out there?  I listened on the edge of my chair in a cold-sweat panic...When the lights came back on, everyone was relieved...especially me!  Thank you oh sweet holy Paula Dean.

As for the actual tournament, not a whole lot to tell, without boring you, except for my brief encounter with "the kid from Kentucky" decked out in Wildcat gear who seemed to enjoy jamming all his chips into the middle of the table and won, by my count, a ridiculous 13 of 15 coin flips, and wrecklessly and without any worry at all.  I hoped to plant some seeds of doubt in his head by mentioning that every season's Kentucky Wildcats football teams proclivity to lose embarassingly in the fourth quarter, no matter by how much they're ahead.   Decade...after decade...after decade!  Maybe it's "dirty pool" to play head games with these people, but, yes, I really wanted to put him in a state of mind where he wouldn't have any confidence.  No such luck.  It only convinced him to try harder to win the game outright in the third quarter!  This kid kept plowing through better hands one at a time felting more people in a three hour span than I'd ever witnessed before...

But maybe that seed did get planted after all.  Although I busted out 22d, about an average payout, "Kentucky" would go on to the final table with a close second place in chips.  Here's the hysterical part.  The other kid, first in chips --  that would be the kid who shove busted me with a KJ, not that I'm bitter, there's something truly successful about unrestrained aggression -- and "Kentucky" apparantly decided that IT WOULD BE A GREAT IDEA for the TWO LARGEST STACKS at the final table to get into an epic raising war.  They were perfectly content to not even try to strategically get the first place money of $148,000 but to settle, psychotically,  for 9th place money of $14,000 if that's what the flop decided.  It was probably the dumbest strategic thinking since der Furher decided, "Hey, we're in a war with France AND Britain and all of our resources are used up....um.... Ich got it!  Let's invade our gigantic military ally Russia too on our other border!  Ja!!!"

Within the blink of an eye, "Kentucky" had over HALF THE CHIPS IN PLAY.  There were eight players left.  Guess what place he came in?  If you guessed "eighth"place and a traditional Kentucky Wildcat football fourth quarter finish you were right!  I watched a little bit of the final table and when my friend Preston Derden got seventh place, he looked like a shell shocked war veteran who had seen just about freaking everything in poker now.  Preston looked like he just successfully navigated a mine field scattered with dead bodies everywhere over three days, to just make it past the last land mine, began to make a final run for the border and get shot by a sniper in the back.  Great run though, Preston!

Of course the night before I had to decompress from getting busted out of the Main in 22d place.  If you've ever played in a poker tournament you totally understand Ricky Bobby's philosophy of, "If you're not first, YOU'RE LAST!"  No cash finish except for first place is anything other than meaningless platitude.  After you leave a tournament, your nerves are SHATTERED, and it takes you a good several hours to acclimate back to the real world.  You have to decompress.  I call this the "Poker Bends" if you try to do anything normally to quickly.  You just can't do it.  You're a freaking MESS.

So Ante Up writer and friend Jennifer Gay took me to the local bar where she'd helpfully feed me enough cocktails to even sedate "Tunie."  It did the trick.  So I wasn't sure when I woke up the next morning if I really did run into "Fat Albert" or not.  Checking my cellphone for photos revealed that my Fat Albert encounter was not just a Pink Elephant.  It really happened!  Wow!  Within two days I spotted the fabled "Tunie" AND "Fat Albert!"  Also a photo montage of the rest of the "sights" we were treated to where she tells the story and I supply the pictures.  Here's the pictures for proof of the stories she'll tell you.  She's a really great writer and as far as I'm concerned, one of the "cool kids" by far.  Below is the link to her Gulf Coast Poker . NET  blog.  It's great to have her on board with us.  Enjoy.  I'm simply tired of writing, so be sure to enjoy her perspective on the event that was...Tunica WSOP 2011.  Bye for now, thanks for reading this jibberish and I look very forward to seeing you guys in ...hmmmmm.....I'm not quite sure yet!  (And lastly a look at the books I'm reading now and my book of the month selection...I'm such an Amazon tool.)

READ JENNIFER'S BLOG RIGHT HERE BABY!

Out of syndication, on hard times...

"Hey baby, what's your name?"

"My name's Jennifer Gay...I'm feelin' lonely...how 'bout you, Tiger?"

We spotted someone downtrodden and asleep at the Food Court in some casino.
We named her "Pocket Jacks."  Seemed appropriate.

Jennifer in the background hot on the trail of  a unibrowed man and his
lovely Pentecostal fashionista woman.  Jennifer carries research
equipment in a bag, and tags them with GPS darts for later study.  The male of the species
exhibited a strong protruding monolithic solitary eyebrow, a latent gene
trait of all Troglodytes.  The female walks unbothered by our photographs, hands behind
back, always, but the male exhibits some signs of stress...

Tracking down Pentecostal fashionista Suzie Ann "Pigtails" Hopkins.  The use of
tranq darts was not permitted in this particular casino, so the couple escaped
back into the wild, unscathed.

A herd like gait, rather sedentary and calm, takes the
two travellers outside the casino, back into the wild.
In the distance, the eerie pitch of a distant Viking
horn being blown could be heard, bringing those lost
from the fold, back.

Checking back on "Pocket Jacks."  Still in repose.  Still regretting overplaying her hand.

A man Checking into this hotel wearing his finest Elmer Fudd cap, Sponge Bob jacket and
jeans with an arrow pointing to...

Goodbye, Pocket Jacks.  Goodbye.

Kai is currently reading:  T.R. The Last Romantic.   Ashamed I don't know much about our early 20th century president.  A really great read just starting off.  Actually halfway through it now, but it's a fattie.  hope to be done by May.  Hey, I have other things to do.
















and Phil Gordon's little Blue book.  A great poker read; just finished it.  Lots of helpful lessons sprinkled in throughout many of his sessions all around the world with poker pros and Hollywood celebrities.  Stories are humorous and well told.  DON'T get his "Little Green Book."  It's got some entertainment value, but few lessons to be drawn from it.