The game is on
Here is what I observed at the Wynn yesterday and day before
!0 millinion Dolar freeze out per day. and $50,000 and $100,000 limits
Picture of Andy Beal
Mid 50's but looks younger than this
Tall with brown hair, White Wynn Cap, White long sleeve comfortable shirt and tan slacks.
sunglasses and ear phones
has a handwritten note that says SLOW DOWN in black marker in plain view. Also has what appears to be a stop watch on a stand for him to view (game theory anyone)?
One advisor two days ago. Two yesterday plus there were about 4 reporters present. 3 of which were asked to leave about 3 to 4 hours into match.
Todd Brunson played two days ago. I think Andy won $3 million but cannot verify it. I know that Todd was down $3.75 million at one time for sure from personal observations.
Yesterday Jennifer Harmon Traniello played. She had David Gray as her sweater/advisor. Ted Forrest arrived a little while later (more on this)
Jennifer was down over $2.5 million but made a nice recovery just before the 1 hour dinner break. They have a very structured break scedule and stick to it pretty much. When they broke for dinner Jennifer was only down $375,000.
There was a brief discussion after dinner. Apparently Jennifer wanted to quit and let Ted take over. Ted was not back from the dinner break yet and Andy agreed to play David Grey until Ted showed up. It was only 10 minutes of play between Andy and David. David lost around $500,000 so the corporation was down around $875,000. Within 2 hours of Ted taking over he was up $3.5 million against Andy and the corporation was up a total of $2.65 milion or so for the day. I left before play ended between them.
I actually find it kind of funny to see all of the hooplah involved. All kinds of phone calls for the corporation and several players coming by to check out the action throughout the day. I do not know all of the stipulations except that the match is for a total of 5 days. I will say that there is a lot of obsessive compulsive behavior and I suspect that there could be more than just this factor in regards my feel for what has transpired. I would love to have an hour or two conversation with Andy to really get a feel for his personality. At one point in time when he was up a rack against Jennifer he made the comment to his advisors that his results were a nice day's work. That quickly evaporated right after he said this! jennifer was not at the table but was talking to David in the hall about strategy I suspect!
At one point they were pretty annoyed at the fact that the auto shuffler was too slow for heads up play. They requested a second auto shuffler be placed on the table but finally agreed on the dealer shuffling the cards as the Wynn could not do the two auto shuffler request.
Also I find it quite interesting in how long the Wynn took to change all of the lights around to Andy's satisfaction before the game started. There were a lot of chiefs to direct the few indians into actually changing the track system and replace the light bulbs.
On a more peronal note we don't need this kind of lighting for our games day in and day out but of course Andy is going to get whatever he asks for. I cannot even get them to change a burned out light bulb over my head (it has happened twice and it was so dark I could not see the difference between a diamond and a heart). I even requested that they change tables because it was New Years Day and there was nary an electrician around but the supervisor refused. The second time he said they would have it changed in a few minutes. It took 45 minutes (43 of which was to get the electricians to the room of course, lol).
Obviously money speaks but considering I spend 6 to 10 hours a day 6 to 7 days a week there you would think my rake would in fact add up to something over a year's time. Anyone want to figure out how much I pay in time and in tips too? 60 hours at $12.00/hr seems like a lot to me in regards to table time (that is around $700 per week but I also play 2-5 which is a rake game so adjust down to somewhere in the vicinity of $30,000/yr not to mention tips.
As another side note I have changed my tipping practices significantly as a result of a number of dealer mistakes last week in the 5-10 game and a number of others over the past 4 weeks as well. Only the excellent dealers will receive a tip from me. One dealer made 5 mistakes in a half hour in the 5-10 no limit game and I lost a lot of money as a result of two of her mistakes. She failed repeatedly to control the action. There are 5 to 6 dealers that deserve every tip they get. About 5 that will occasionally receive a tip when they do well on their down. There are 4 or 5 dealers who I will never tip. That is a huge change from my prior tipping pattern when I tipped just about every dealer.
Another interesting thing has occurred. The 80-160 game moved to the Wynn and is a 60-120 game. There has been a fairly large influx of players to the Wynn from the Bellagio in the past 3 weeks but I am not sure that it is a great idea given the problems I have been experiencing there lately. One obvious reason is that the floor supervisors at the Bellagio are sometimes rude and at other times down right arrogant and very rude. That is not just my opinion but comments I hear from most of the players that are coming to the Wynn. I hope a few of the supervisors at the Wynn do not make similar mistakes as I have witnessed recently. Otter
Administrator of PokerStrategyForum.com and columnist for Poker Player magazine. "Never Play Poker with a Man Called Doc!"
Post Edited (Otter) : 2/3/2006 3:20:22 PM GMT