Poker Pointers Now

From earning $3,088,012 after finishing fifth in the 2010 WSOP Main Event to corralling fellow poker-playing girlfriend Annette Obrestad, Scott Montgomery has had quite a few highs over the past several months.  However, the highs may be over after Montgomery was robbed at knifepoint in a Bellagio bathroom.

Montgomery was at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino for a Fiesta al Lago side event when he went to the bathroom during a break.  Inside the bathroom, a gentleman pulled a knife on Montgomery and demanded his money.  Scott sent out a Twitter message afterwards that read, “Got mugged today at Bellagio.  Black guy pulled a knife on me in the restroom.  I gave him the $2K in my wallet and he left.”

Besides the fact that he was robbed and lost $2,000, what made Scott Montgomery maddest was the lax way the Bellagio security staff dealt with this matter.  According to Montgomery, it took security 15 minutes to respond to his help call, which was more than enough time for the robber to get away.  Security also didn’t ask Montgomery if he wanted to review the security tapes adding further insult to injury.

Robberies are common in Sin City where several celebrities have either been robbed or threatened for money.  2004 WSOP Main Event champion Greg Raymer thwarted a robbery attempt after fighting off two men trying to take his cash.  NFL wide receiver Javon Walker was beaten and robbed in Las Vegas; police found him unconscious in an intersection.  Actress and former playmate Kelly Monaco hid under bed after a thief broke into her hotel room to ransack the place.  As you can see, it’s never good to be alone and a celebrity in Vegas.

I was looking at old poker videos the other day, and I came upon this gem.  It involves one of the biggest douchebags in poker history…..Eric Molina.

If you haven’t heard of Molina before, then you weren’t really missing out on anything over the years.  He’s a flash-in-the-pan WSOP Main Event casher who managed to carve out a name for himself in poker lore by being a total %&!hole during the 2006 WSOP.  And this wasn’t just annoying Hevad Khan-style Main Event behavior because Khan was only acting like an idiot to get attention and possibly a sponsorship deal.

With Molina, it was more like a sad display of low self-esteem and hatred rolled into one, and unleashed on all of the other 2006 Main Event competitors.  The Villanova college student showed the maturity of a middle schooler in his deep run through the Main Event.

At around 2:25 in the video, you get your first glimpse of Molina.  He doesn’t even have to open his mouth for you to hate him.  Fortunately, he does though so it makes it even easier.  Even if you choose not to watch the video, just picture Macaulay Culkin sitting at a poker table being a jerk to everybody.

Just in this montage, he manages to shake another player’s hand while telling him “terrible call,” orders the dealer to flip his cards over, and calls another player an amateur when he’s only been playing for three months himself.

You can already see that Molina is a loser from the first video, but you haven’t seen it all until you watch this.  Molina gets into a verbal battle with Jamie Gold, and actually manages to make people like Gold in this instance.  The highlight occurs at 4:22 when Molina flips his all-in button at Gold before Gold hits him with the button.  Eventually, Molina says the F-word and is put into timeout by the WSOP staff.

Perhaps the most telling sign of how much of a douchebag Molina is comes when you look at this career tournament results….or should I say result.  Molina’s 31^st place finish at the WSOP accounts for his entire tournament resume.  Sure the $329,865 he earned from this one cash is a lot, but the way he talks, you’d have figured that he would be dominating high stakes play by now.

If you read the Carbon Poker Blog much, then you are no stranger to Gus Hansen’s struggles. In fact, Hansen has done so badly that he’s considered the reason why many of the big online games exist.

Fortunately, Gus isn’t a total fish as he recently proved in the World Series of Poker Europe.  Playing in the £10,000 High Roller Heads-Up event, Hansen met up with Jim Collopy in the final.  This matchup was a best two out of three contest where Hansen cruised to an early lead by winning the first game.  And he was cruising through the second game until suffering a few bad beats and relinquishing the game to Collopy.  Luckily for Hansen, he pulled through in the third heads-up contest and won the bracelet.

For Hansen, his first WSOP bracelet is much bigger than the £288,409 first place, which will probably be donated to the likes of Tom Dwan and Phil Galfond in a few months anyways.  Now Gus doesn’t have to worry about being thrown in those lame discussions about the best player to never have won a bracelet.

In addition to this, he creeps farther up the all-time tournament money winners list and adds another big win to his tourney resume.  So far, Hansen has won three World Poker Tour titles and an Aussie Millions Main Event title.  He’s also won quite a few other tournaments, which has to make a person wonder why he insists on jumping in high stakes online games with the best players in the world. Whatever the reason is, his opponents are no doubt hoping he returns……

Poker endurance records are becoming all the rage since Phil Laak didn’t even wait a year until he broke Paul Zimbler’s record of 72 straight hours. In fact, Laak shattered the record by playing poker for 115 straight hours. Now when you break 115 hours down, that’s nearly 5 straight days spent at the poker table. And I’d say that anybody who attempts to break this record is as crazy as Phil himself.

Apparently, there are 80 people just as crazy as Phil since NZ Poker Tours is planning an event aimed at beating Laak’s record just three months after the fact. NZ Poker Tours is going to hold a tournament in New Zealand where all 80 participants will be trying to last longer than 115 hours at the poker table.

With a tournament that lasts this long, you’d expect most of the players to bust out long before 115 hours. And that’s why tournament officials have made it so the buy-in levels won’t increase until the record is broken. In addition to this, there will be unlimited rebuys so people can keep buying in after they bust out. In short, anybody who can sustain verticality at the poker table will remain in the tournament.

As is typical with these events, all money made will go to charity so pride is the main motivation behind trying to break the record. And it seems likely that somebody out of this group could break Laak’s record since there are 80 people going for it at the same time. Then again, I doubt that any of the players involved have any idea what it feels like to play poker for almost 5 days straight.

The results are in for the 2010 WSOP Hall of Fame, and most of the nominees are familiar names. Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, Barry Greenstein, Jennifer Harman-Traniello, Dan Harrington, Daniel Negreanu, Linda Johnson, Scotty Nguyen, Tom McEvoy, and Erik Seidel all made the cut.

The nominations were made according to fan votes from July 1st to August 31st. The list still needs to be finalized by the Poker Hall of Fame Governing Council to see if all of the aforementioned players are worthy of a nomination. After all, there’s always the possibility that one of the nominees will get Tom Dwan’ed, and booted out before the real voting even begins.

Speaking of the real voting, 17 media members and 16 living Poker Hall of Fame members will vote on the 10 nominees. Only 2 people will be inducted into the Poker HOF (based on votes) so this is pretty exclusive company. In addition to being one of the top 2 vote getters, a HOF inductee must also meet the following criteria:

- Have played against acknowledged top competition
- Played high stakes poker
- Played consistently well while gaining the respect of other players
- Withstood the test of time
- Contributed to the overall growth and success of poker with lasting results (in the case of non-players such as Linda Johnson).

Considering that only one player made it in last year – Mike Sexton – meeting all of the requirements in addition to being a top 2 vote getter isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world. And it’s tough to predict who will get in at this point, but one early favorite has to be Phil Ivey. He was on the ballot last year, and continues to crush both high stakes games and tournaments as evidenced by his 8th WSOP bracelet this year. What else does Ivey gotta do besides be older?