Playing Poker With Phil Gordon and Wil Wheaton

Every Thurs. night I try to get into a little tournament some co-workers run. Unlike Fridays at HDouble’s this is far less of a Murder’s Row. It’s a fun game though and I tend to do fairly well either in the tournament or in the side-games that spring up (though, normally, I skip the side games because they tend to run pretty late).

This Thursday had a little excitement that other Thursday games usually lacked. Phil Gordon decided to drop in on our little game. There’s nothing like a poker pro dropping in on your game to get some action and as soon as word got out that Phil was in, the game maxed out just under 40 players. The game even drew in the man I’ve exchanged far too many emails with, without ever meeting, Wil Wheaton.

My luck started off poorly though. I drew a table that included neither Wil nor Phil. Unfortunately, my cards ran the same way. No big complaints but it was just one of those nights where if I had a big hand I couldn’t get action and if I had a weak hand I got too much action. The hand that summed up my night was 93o in the BB. Flop comes 9 high. It’s checked around and the turn comes a blank too. I bet out hoping my pair of nines is good and get raised by the player to my left and get re-raised, all-in, from MP. I fold. The funny part is that all three of us had nines. They both had two pair.

Anyway, despite my lack of traction, I somehow made it through two table consolidations. First hand at the second table I catch JJ and I’m severely short stacked. I push and get called by KK.

Of course, you have no interest in the last two paragraphs, right? What about Phil Gordon and Wil Wheaton? Well, Phil was dominating his table. He even sent our dear Franklin packing when he called his all-in bet with 83 and busted him. Franklin starts every day at about 50% tilt and had it been anyone other than Phil Gordon I think I might have seen Franklin at 112.4% tilt. Instead he had the composure to grab one of the Phil Gordon DVD’s Phil brought with him and ask him to sign it. Phil obliged and wrote “Don’t play 83.”

One of the most interesting hands of the night that I saw was Phil Gordon vs. one of the new guys at the office. One player goes all-in with about 5x the BB, new guy calls, Phil calls, and another guy goes all-in, over the top, for about 10x the BB. New guy and Phil call. Flop is raggedy and it goes check, check. Turn brings another rag and it goes check, check. River is another rag and Phil pushes all in. New guy insta-calls and flips up AA which beats everyone in the hand. The interesting part is, new guy is still learning how to play.

Wil busted out at some point during the evening and we got a side-game going with Wil, Rick W, Chris the Geek and a few other fine folks. I’ve gotta give it to Wil, he’s not a bad player. He even played the hammer, raising pre-flop, betting out on the flop, betting out on the turn and finally gave it up on the river. The man has some cahones on him.

The funniest play of the night was Chris the Geek against RB. RB is an accomplished player who sat down at our little side game just to have some fun. The board ends up with about a billion possible hands (straights and overs) that beat Chris and the betting on each street has been in the 20 – 40x the BB range. Every street RB bets out by saying “Well, I’m going to take just one more shot at stealing this pot.” When the river finally comes it’s obvious that RB either has the nuts or RB has been bluffing the entire way. Chris goes into the tank for a looooooooooong time and everyone at the table is busting his chops. After what seemed like an eternity, Chris finally makes the call and when the cards are flipped up, RB shows a busted draw. So far, nothing too funny, right? Well, Chris is still so shaken from the verbal assault from both RB and the rest of us that he can’t even take down the pot. The betting had gotten so furious that Chris was playing with cash he had acquired earlier and even though he won, he starts trying to put his cash into the pot and take his change before pulling down the pot. He has RB’s river bet covered and he’s making change for his cash as if he had lost!

I only post Chris’ hand because someone said, “Chris is going to post on his blog about what an amazing call he made and Bill is going to post on his blog that Chris couldn’t take down the pot.” The prophecy must be fulfilled.

Some side notes:

Phil Gordon is both much crueler and much cooler than what he appears to be on television. When he happened to pass Franklin in the hall after laying the 83 bad beat on him, Phil said “Never play 83!” On the other side, no matter how many people asked him to sign crap or take pictures with them (including me) Phil not only agreed but acted as if it was the least he could do.

Wil Wheaton is as cool as I thought he would be. Wil is someone who I’ve always been one degree away from meeting in person. I used to work on William Shatner’s website and he exchanged a few emails with us. After that, I later found out that Wil was using a piece of software I wrote called, TextAds, on his website. Once I got into poker, I found out that several people I know from the poker world know Wil. When I won the WPBT Aladdin Classic, Wil sent me a signed copy of his book (thanks to AlCan’tHang) and we shot a few emails back and forth. Yadda, yadda, yadda. In other words, even though I had never met the guy, I had almost met him several times. Long story short, he’s as cool as he comes across in emails.

As a special bonus . . . Wil said he was 97% sure he was coming to the WPBT Winter Classic in December. I should also mention that Wil is hosting a tournament tomorrow at 4pm EST on PokerStars. Due to the early start time, I can’t make it but maybe some of you east coasters or euro-types who read my blog can make it.

[UPDATE] Catch Franklin and Chris’ take on the evening.

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