The Islands
Idiots have been trying to regulate our freedoms forever, but thankfully poker’s purity and pleasures have run so deep into mainstream consciousness that they (poker’s purity and pleasures, not the idiots) will be here forever. The idiots will just have to live with it. (Well, now that I think about it the idiots are probably never going away either, but I diverge.) Poker is spreading. That is what I am getting at. Around every corner it seems there is a new venue. With all the poker that is available, we are given the opportunity to be able to pick and choose the best and proceed accordingly.
And what better place to hold a poker tournament than a relaxing island with perfect waves and perfect beaches for all your down time? I am very happy to report that poker has made its way to the British West Indies!
Turks and Caicos to be exact. It is gorgeous. It is tropical. And it is only about an hour flight from Miami. Island time!
The WPT used to have their island time on Aruba, but this year they choose a new locale for their official Island Poker Classic. The Aruba tourney is still a poker staple; in fact this year it directly followed the Turks and Caicos event. Lots of players went to both events. I am stoked that I went to the fi rst ever Turks and Caicos event. And I’m even more stoked that it was hosted by one of the coolest guys on the island. His name was Rhynie Campbell. One of the locals, and one of the nicest guys you will ever meet. He made sure that everyone’s stay was fi rst class and really came through when it came to anything and everything hospitality related.
It was one of the most well-run tournaments I have ever been to. It was at a Club Med. Genius. Just genius. When you leave your hotel room, all you need is a wrist band and everything else is taken care of. Drinks, food, gym, table tennis, towels for the pool, one more round of piña coladas, whatever it was that you might need, the answer is always the same. No problem. Service with a smile. They even had a snack shack sort of thing that served whatever your heart desired until about three in the morning. A poker degenerate's dream.
The beaches were unreal. Softest sand ever! The water was amazing, too. Just the right temperature. Water temp? Did someone say water temp? Hmmmm… Ok, I’ve gotta tell you a story. Towards the end of the trip a lot of players were boozing it up at the pool bar when someone got to wondering how long a person could stay in the ocean before it was unsafe. Even the most perfect water can be deadly if you are in it too long. It might take a few days, but even warm water can lead to hypothermia if given the time.
Eventually the conversation got around to the story of when, back in the day, Huck Seed found his way into an “Ocean Bet.” Wikipedia has it all wrong. Wikipedia states: “He once lost 50,000 dollars on a proposition bet with Phil Hellmuth that he could stand in the water up to his shoulders for eighteen hours. He lasted only three hours.” This is WILDLY off the mark.
The truth is this. (Just got off the phone with Huck about an hour ago.) About twelve and a half years ago, he bet Hellmuth 10,000 (not 50,000) that he could fl oat and/or tread water (not stand!) in any ocean of his own choice for twenty-four hours. At the time 10k was a small wager between these two. They found themselves in proposition bets a lot at that time and the amounts were often to the tune of 50 to 150k!
With a month to go, for some reason Huck couldn’t be bothered to go through with it. Naturally Huck was originally planning on finding the warmest ocean with the highest salt content for this bet. But in the end he elected to just bail on the bet and pay. How that Wikipedia got so off the mark is beyond me. But I diverge.
Ok, back to the story. So people were giving their best guesses as to the actual details of Huck’s “Ocean Bet,” when someone got to the idea of whether Serb (Nenad Medic) couldn’t do something similar right then and there. But in the end, with planes to make and without proper floodlights (to monitor Serb’s well-being in the water), the bet just never got air.
However, a splinter bet started to gel. What about the pool?” someone asked! And a bit later Matt “Hazards” Giannetti ended up making a bet against Lee Markholt and David Williams (and Chris Smith) for 15k (7, 7, and 1) that he could stand up to (almost) his neck in the Club Med pool for 12 hours. It was about midnight when the bet formed. Well, Mom, this is what happens to poker players when the game doesn’t get going. People end up standing in pools for a half a day.
None of this would have happened except that it was the last night and there was no poker game going to distract these idle youths. After the bet was made, people needed something to bide their time while the progress reports came in on Matt. So they started a game! Now Matt finally had his game, however it would cost him 15k to take a seat! Within thirty minutes of Matt getting into the pool, the island suddenly divided into three groups:
1) People who were sleeping and missing the whole thing.
2) People who thought it could not be done.
3) People who thought it could be done.
I fell into group three. I mean, have you ever played with Matt? The guy can get focused if he wants to. And I fi gured if he stood to lose 15k, he was never planning on losing. That was enough for me. But it was too late for me to get any real action. By the time I got wind of the bet, almost all the action was taken. About 40k in side bets went down. By the way, Matt was not allowed to increase his stake as it was correctly figured that it would increase his motivation. Somehow, I still managed to squeeze two thousand out of this already pulverized market. (Thank you, Mike Sexton and Sumeet.)
Matt won the bet, and that was that. Last night I asked Matt if it was all worth it and he was ambivalent. “Probably not; if I knew how long it was going to take to recover, I may have never bothered.” It turns out it took him about a week to beat the cold that he got from this harebrained bet.
I have no idea why I drifted off into a story about this bet, but that is where my brain went and the last thing I need to be doing at this point in my life is to try and tell my brain what to do. It is the boss of me and I am its slave.
Anyway, I had an amazing time at this tournament and have a lot of people to thank for that. The games were fantastic whether at the tables or pools; the tournament itself was brilliantly run (thanks, Jack McCelland), and the host was incredible as well. Thanks again, Rhynie Campbell. Oh, and did I mention who won the tournament? Rhynie did! How totally and fully cool is that!?!?! What a great end to a great trip. Congrats again, Rhynie! Well done!
